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Anchovy Powder

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Anchovy Powder

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pound the anchovies in a mortar.

  2. Rub them through a sieve to create a smooth paste.

  3. Mix the paste with dried flour.

  4. Roll the mixture into thin cakes.

  5. Dry the cakes in a Dutch oven over a low heat.

  6. Once dried, pound the cakes to a fine powder.

  7. Store the powder in a well-sealed bottle.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Avocadofits less well

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

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