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Sauce

Anchovy Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, flour, water or fish stock, anchovy essence, cayenne, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 637 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Anchovy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Mix in the flour and fry gently without browning for 1-2 minutes.

  3. Add the water or fish stock and stir until boiling.

  4. Boil for 4-5 minutes.

  5. Stir in the anchovy essence, cayenne, and lemon juice.

  6. If the sauce is too thick, add a little more water.

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. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour while the flour cooks.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the melted butter and liquid.
Water or fish stock
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a sauce.
Essence of anchovy
Gives the sauce its salty, savoury fish flavour.

The step that matters

Frying the flour without browning. Cooking the flour gently in butter removes its raw taste and helps it thicken smoothly. Browning it would add colour and a toasted flavour, changing the pale, clean sauce and weakening its thickening power.

“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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