Name: Anchovy Sauce
Ingredients: ½ cup English melted butter; 2 teaspoons anchovy; 3 tablespoons cream

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Anchovy Sauce

Ingredients

½ cup English melted butter
2 teaspoons anchovy
3 tablespoons cream

Directions

Boil the melted butter.
Add the anchovy and cream to the boiled butter.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,697 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Anchovy + creamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together798 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

English melted butter: Provides the fat base that carries the sauce and gives it richness.
Anchovy: Adds a salty, savoury depth that rounds out the flavour of the sauce.
Cream: Adds moisture and a smooth, silky texture to the 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.