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Anchovy Sauce

A buttery sauce flavored with anchovy essence, mace, and cayenne pepper, optionally blended with anchovy fillets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Anchovy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the melted butter and essence of anchovies.

  2. Add the mace and cayenne pepper to taste.

  3. If using, pound the anchovies until smooth and mix them into the boiling butter.

  4. Simmer for 1 to 2 minutes, then strain the sauce if needed.

  5. Bring the sauce to a boil and serve.

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. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Melted butter
Carries the flavour and gives the sauce a smooth, rich body.
Essence of anchovies
Provides the main savoury, salty flavour of the sauce.
Fine mellow anchovies
Adds deeper anchovy flavour and a smoother texture when pounded into the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer briefly, then bring to a boil. Butter can separate or scorch if overheated, so keeping heat gentle and brief helps the sauce stay smooth and glossy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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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