Skip to main content
Sauce

Cream, Anchovy

A creamy sauce made with anchovies, egg yolk, cream, aspic jelly, oil, spices, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Wash, bone, and pound the anchovies with the hard-boiled egg yolk.

  2. Season with cayenne, nutmeg, and salad oil.

  3. Stir in the aspic jelly while it is still cool but liquid.

  4. Rub the mixture through a sieve and mix with the whipped cream.

  5. Set aside to cool and add lemon juice just before serving.

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 main salty, savoury flavour of the cream.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Binds the pounded anchovies into a smooth, thick paste.
Cream
Whipped to add lightness and a soft, creamy texture.
Aspic jelly
Adds gelling power so the cream sets as it cools.
Salad oil
Adds fat and richness to the smooth paste.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a sieve and mix with the whipped cream. Sieving breaks up any remaining fibres and lumps so the paste is smooth. The cream must be folded in gently while the base is cool but not setting, otherwise it can deflate or become grainy and lose its airy texture.

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.

More anchovy cream recipes

Sauce 6 See all 3 →

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