Skip to main content
Sauce

Anchovy Butter

A butter spread flavored with anchovy paste, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and hard‑boiled egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the butter

  1. In a bowl, combine the butter, anchovy paste (or filleted anchovies), lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and hard-boiled egg yolks.

  2. Pound all the ingredients together until well mixed.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve to achieve a smooth consistency.

Serve

  1. Use as directed.

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. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Anchovy + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides the fat base that carries the flavours and gives the spread its richness.
Anchovy paste
Adds a salty, savoury depth that defines the flavour of the butter.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add body and richness, helping the mixture hold together as a smooth spread.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the saltiness of the anchovy.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve. Pounding alone leaves small lumps of yolk and fibres of anchovy. Pressing the mixture through a fine sieve breaks these down, giving the smooth, even texture the spread needs.

“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 butter recipes

Sauce 8Broccoli with Sauce 3 See all 84 →

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