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Anchovy and Butter

A sauce made by melting anchovies with wine or vinegar, then blending with butter, soy sauce, espagnole, lemon juice, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Anchovy and Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the anchovy base

  1. Melt the anchovies in wine or vinegar without boiling.

  2. Work the melted anchovies into the butter or plain sauce.

  3. For a richer sauce, dissolve 4 or 5 anchovies in wine or vinegar, then mix with ¼ cup of butter and ½ tablespoon of soy sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. Let the butter just melt and mix it at the moment of serving.

  2. For a thicker sauce, pound 4 anchovies with the same amount of butter, add 4 tablespoons of warmed espagnole sauce and lemon juice, then strain.

  3. If too thick, add a little stock.

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. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Sauce + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Anchovies
Melt into the liquid to give the sauce its salty, savoury depth.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture as it melts into the sauce.
Espagnole sauce
Forms the body of the thicker version, adding structure and savoury flavour.
Wine or vinegar
Acidic liquid that dissolves the anchovies and sharpens the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and anchovy flavour.

The step that matters

Let the butter just melt and mix at serving. Butter is an emulsion of fat and water. If it is overheated or held too long, the fat separates and the sauce turns greasy or broken. Gentle heat and last-minute mixing keep it smooth.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, butter, sauce):

  1. Grapefits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, butter, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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