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Sauce

Anchovy Winb

A sauce made by simmering anchovies with wine, vinegar, spices, and aromatics, then bottled and sealed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and sherry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 307 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Anchovy Winb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the anchovies

  1. Wash the anchovies in white wine vinegar.

  2. Chop or pound the anchovies, bones included.

  3. Simmer the anchovies in sherry and claret for 15 minutes.

  4. Strain the vinegar into the mixture.

Make the sauce

  1. Add white wine, shallots, ginger, black pepper, Jamaica pepper, nutmeg, lemon peel, and mace.

  2. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes.

Bottle and seal

  1. Pour the sauce into perfectly dried bottles rinsed with a drop of spirits.

  2. Cork the bottles tightly and seal.

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. White wine + sherrytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

  3. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  5. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 umami base that dissolves into the sauce as it cooks.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity that extracts flavour from the anchovies and helps preserve the sauce.
Shallots
Contribute mild onion-like sweetness and aroma as they soften in the liquid.
Sherry
Adds depth and a mellow, slightly nutty aroma while simmering with the anchovies.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 30 minutes. A full, steady boil reduces the liquid and concentrates the flavours, while the anchovies break down. Stopping early leaves a thinner, less developed sauce.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, vinegar, sherry, shallot, pepper, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, vinegar, sherry, shallot, pepper, nutmeg, lemon. 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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