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Anchovy Sauce

A savory sauce made from anchovies, shallot, fish stock, wine, lemon, butter, vinegar, flour, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Anchovy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the anchovy base

  1. Combine the anchovies and minced shallot with the fish stock or gravy in a saucepan.

  2. Boil until soft enough to pound into a paste.

  3. Strain the mixture.

Thicken and finish the sauce

  1. Thicken the gravy with the body of the fish, after removing the heads, tails, and bones.

  2. Add the red wine, lemon juice, and butter to the thickened gravy.

  3. Simmer for about 30 minutes.

  4. Melt the butter in the water used to boil the fish.

  5. Add vinegar and flour.

  6. Stir until thick.

  7. Mix 2 or 3 tablespoons of prepared essence of anchovy into melted butter.

  8. Season with cayenne pepper.

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

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

  2. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Red wine + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together575 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Dissolve into the stock to give the sauce its salty, savoury depth.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy body to the finished sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the sauce becomes stirred to a thick consistency.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds brightness and acidity that balances the rich butter.

The step that matters

Stir until thick. Flour must be cooked while stirring so it thickens evenly without lumps; stopping early leaves the sauce thin, and uneven heating can scorch it.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, fish, red wine, butter, vinegar, flour, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, fish, red wine, butter, vinegar, flour, 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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