Name: Anchovy Sauce for Fish
Ingredients: 4 anchovies; 2 tablespoons butter; ¼ teaspoon pepper; juice of ½ small lemon

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 for Fish

Ingredients

4 anchovies
2 tablespoons butter
¼ teaspoon pepper
juice of ½ small lemon

Directions

Prepare

Remove bones from the anchovies and pound them in a mortar to a paste with the butter.
In a saucepan, melt enough butter to make ½ cup.

Make the sauce

Stir in the pounded anchovies, pepper, and lemon juice.
Boil for one minute.
Serve very hot with turbot or soles.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies: Provide the salty, savory base flavor that defines the sauce.
Butter: Adds richness and body, carrying the anchovy flavor as a smooth sauce.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the anchovy saltiness.

The step that matters

Boil for one minute. Boiling briefly after the anchovy paste goes in cooks it through and blends the flavors. Boiling too long can make the butter separate and turn greasy.

“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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Anchovy Sauce for Fish