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Anchovy Sauce, No. 1

A sauce made with butter, flour, anchovies, cayenne, carmine, and fish stock or milk and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and fish are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Anchovy Sauce, No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux and sauce

  1. Melt ½ oz. of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and fry together without browning.

  3. Gradually stir in the stock or milk and water, and bring to a boil.

Add the anchovy flavouring

  1. Pound the anchovies in a mortar until smooth.

  2. Add a pinch of cayenne to the anchovy paste.

  3. Mix the anchovy paste thoroughly with the melted butter.

  4. Color the sauce with a few drops of carmine.

  5. Simmer for 3-4 minutes.

  6. Add the remaining butter.

  7. Serve.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + fishtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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 the anchovy flavour through the sauce.
Anchovies
Provide the salty, savoury flavour that defines the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked briefly in fat and then mixed with liquid.
Fish stock or milk and water
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the stock in gradually. Adding liquid slowly to the hot roux while stirring keeps the flour dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

“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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