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Sauce

Sauce, Anchovy

A savory sauce made with butter, flour, milk, salt, pepper, and anchovy essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sauce, Anchovy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

Thicken and season

  1. Gradually add the milk, stirring well until the mixture boils.

  2. Add salt, pepper, and anchovy essence.

  3. Simmer for 5 minutes.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + anchovytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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
Adds fat and richness, and carries flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Starch thickens the milk into a smooth, coating sauce as it heats.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a creamy sauce.
Anchovy essence
Provides the savoury, salty fish flavour that defines the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk while stirring well. Flour starch must be dispersed evenly in the fat before and as the liquid is added. Adding milk too fast or stopping to stir lets starch clump into lumps that won't smooth out, leaving the sauce grainy.

“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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