Skip to main content
Sauce

Essence of Anchovy

A concentrated anchovy sauce made by pounding anchovies, simmering with water or vinegar, cayenne pepper, and optional lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Essence of Anchovy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the essence

  1. Pound the anchovies in a mortar to a pulp.

  2. Add cold spring water or vinegar to the mortar, shake, and pour into the pounded anchovies.

Cook and strain

  1. Set the mixture over a slow fire, stirring frequently until melted, about 5 minutes.

  2. Stir in cayenne pepper and let it warm for a few more minutes.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve using the back of a wooden spoon.

  4. For a fresh flavor, infuse with thin-cut lemon peel if using immediately.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Break down into a pulp and melt to give the essence its salty, savory depth.
Cayenne pepper
Adds gentle heat that rounds out the anchovy flavor.

The step that matters

Set the mixture over a slow fire and stir frequently. Gentle, steady heat melts the anchovies evenly without scorching them. Frequent stirring prevents hot spots that could burn the mixture and make it taste bitter.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, 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.

You might also like

Hot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes