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Anchovy Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, flour, fish stock, anchovy essence, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 637 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Anchovy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add the flour and mix well with a wooden spoon.

  3. Gradually add about ⅓ of the fish stock or water, stirring until boiling.

  4. Add the remaining stock or water gradually, bring to a boil, and boil for three minutes.

  5. Season with pepper and stir in the anchovy essence.

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. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Anchovy + peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour as the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter and stock.
Fish stock or water
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, which thickens as it comes to a boil.
Anchovy essence
Adds the salty, savoury anchovy flavour that defines the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the stock gradually. Adding the liquid in stages while stirring lets the flour disperse evenly, which prevents lumps and gives a smooth, consistent sauce.

“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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