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Sauce

Anchovy Sauce for Fish

A savory sauce made with butter, anchovy liquor, walnut sauce, mushroom ketchup, lemon juice, Cayenne pepper, soy sauce, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Anchovy Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the anchovy liquor, walnut sauce, mushroom ketchup, lemon juice, Cayenne pepper, and soy sauce if using.

  3. Stir in enough flour and water to achieve a proper thickness.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil and skim off any foam.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Forms the fat base of the sauce and carries the flavors.
Anchovy liquor
Adds the salty, savory depth that defines the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to food.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and water gradually. Flour thickens only when its starch is dispersed and heated, so adding it all at once can leave lumps or an uneven thickness. Adding it in stages and stirring keeps the sauce smooth and lets you judge the consistency before it becomes too thick.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, anchovy, sauce, mushroom, ketchup, lemon, pepper):

  1. Walnutthe original
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Sesamefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, anchovy, sauce, mushroom, ketchup, lemon, 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.

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