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Sauce

Cream, Anchovy

A creamy anchovy sauce made with egg yolk, aspic jelly, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cream, Anchovy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the egg hard and remove the yolk into a basin.

  2. Wash, bone, and pound the anchovies with the egg yolk.

Make the sauce

  1. Add cayenne, nutmeg, salad oil, and mix well.

  2. Stir in the aspic jelly until combined.

  3. Cool before using.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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 salty, savoury flavour that defines the sauce.
Egg yolk
Pounds into a smooth base and helps bind the oil into the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the sauce.
Aspic jelly
Adds gelatine-based body that helps the sauce set when cooled.
Salad oil
Adds fat for a silky, emulsified texture.

The step that matters

Cool before using. The sauce depends on the aspic jelly setting as it cools; using it warm can leave it runny and unstable, since gelatine only firms up once chilled.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, nutmeg. 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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