Name: Anchovy Sauce
Ingredients: ½ cup melted butter; 6 teaspoons anchovies (or 2-3 fine mellow anchovies); ¼ teaspoon mace; high seasoning of cayenne

Why it works: Butter and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,405 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Anchovy Sauce

Ingredients

½ cup melted butter
6 teaspoons anchovies (or 2-3 fine mellow anchovies)
¼ teaspoon mace
high seasoning of cayenne

Directions

In a saucepan, add melted butter and anchovies.
Mix in mace and cayenne to taste.
Simmer gently for a few minutes until well combined.

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.

Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,405 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Butter and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 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 a salty, savoury depth that flavours the butter sauce.
Melted butter: Forms the fat base that carries the flavours and gives the sauce its smooth body.
Mace: Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the sauce.
Cayenne: Adds gentle heat that sharpens the savoury flavours.

“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.