Why it works: Fennel and butter work together. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 647 recipes. Both carry anethole, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓
Fennel Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fennel
Remove the fennel from the stalks.
Boil the fennel in water until tender.
Drain and chop the fennel.
Finish the sauce
Add the chopped fennel to the melted butter sauce, using 2 tablespoons of fennel for every ½ pint of sauce.
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.
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Fennel + buttertop 27% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together647 recipes
Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fennel
- Provides the main flavour and soft, chopped texture that the sauce is built around.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, giving the melted sauce its body and smooth mouthfeel.
The step that matters
Drain and chop the fennel.. Excess cooking water left on the boiled fennel would thin the butter sauce and dilute its flavour, so the fennel should be drained well before it is added.
“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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