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Sauce

Anchovy Sauce Au Beurre

Anchovy sauce made with anchovies, butter, wine or Spanish sauce, lemon juice, and consommé.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Anchovy Sauce Au Beurre

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the anchovies

  1. Wash anchovies, remove bones and scales, and dry them.

  2. Cut anchovies into small pieces and pound into a paste.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix anchovy paste with double its weight in fresh butter.

  2. In a saucepan, combine mixture with Spanish sauce or white wine over low heat.

  3. Stir continuously until warmed through.

  4. Add lemon juice to taste, strain sauce, and if too thick, add a little consommé.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. 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
Provide the main salty, savory flavour that defines the sauce.
Fresh butter
Carries the anchovy flavour and gives the sauce a rich, smooth body.
Spanish sauce or white wine
Thins the butter mixture and adds body and savoury depth to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, salty flavour of the sauce.
Consomme
Thins the sauce further if it becomes too thick.

The step that matters

Warming the butter mixture over low heat while stirring continuously. Butter is an emulsion of fat and water; excessive heat or stopping to stir can split it into greasy fat and liquid, leaving the sauce broken rather than smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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