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Sauce

Anchovy Sauce

A butter-based sauce flavored with anchovy essence and lemon juice, served with fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,697 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Anchovy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the melted butter with the essence of anchovy while hot.

  2. Add a few drops of lemon juice if desired.

Serve

  1. Serve in a sauceboat with boiled or fried fish, do not pour over the fish.

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 + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Anchovy + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melted butter carries the anchovy flavour and gives the sauce a smooth, rich body.
Essence of anchovy
Supplies the salty, savoury anchovy flavour that defines the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds a little acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the saltiness.

“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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