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Anchovy Butter

Anchovy butter is a spread made by pounding anchovies with butter and lemon juice, then sieving and forming into small pats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Anchovy Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the anchovies

  1. Soak, wipe, and bone the anchovies.

Make the butter

  1. Pound the anchovies in a mortar with the butter and lemon juice.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Form small pats.

Serve

  1. Place them on broiled meats or fish.

  2. Serve before the butter dissolves.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Provide the salty, savoury flavour that defines the butter.
Butter
Forms the smooth base that binds the pounded anchovies and holds its shape as pats.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, salty flavour of the butter.

The step that matters

Serve before the butter dissolves. Butter softens and melts at warm temperatures, so once it starts to dissolve the pats lose their shape and the butter spreads thinly over the hot meat or fish.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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