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Sauce

Anchovy Sauce

A sauce made from anchovies, water, flour, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Anchovy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the anchovy liquid

  1. Boil the anchovies in water for about 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture and let the liquid cool.

Finish the sauce

  1. Mix the cooled liquid with flour and butter.

  2. Stir over low heat until it just comes to a boil.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Anchovies
Dissolve into the liquid to give the sauce a savory, salty depth.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated in liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the flour mixture. Stir the cooled liquid, flour and butter over low heat so the flour dissolves evenly and thickens without lumps. Flour starch can stick and scorch on the base of the pan if left unstirred, and stopping at the first boil keeps the sauce smooth.

“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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