Met een eetlepel proefde Anna de saus, en daarna zette ze de dop weer stevig op de fles.

Met een eetlepel means with a tablespoon and tells you how Anna tasted the sauce.

Dutch often puts this kind of extra information at the beginning of a sentence for emphasis or style. English can do this too:

• With a tablespoon, Anna tasted the sauce.

So here, the sentence begins with the instrument Anna used.

This is because of the verb-second rule in Dutch main clauses.

In a normal sentence, you might have:

• Anna proefde de saus.
  = Anna tasted the sauce.

But if something else comes first, like Met een eetlepel, then the finite verb must still stay in the second position:

• Met een eetlepel proefde Anna de saus.

So the order becomes:

1. Met een eetlepel
2. proefde
3. Anna

This is very common in Dutch.

No, they are different verbs.

• proeven = to taste
• proberen = to try

So:

• Anna proefde de saus = Anna tasted the sauce
• Anna probeerde de saus would usually mean something more like Anna tried the sauce in a broader sense, but proeven is the normal verb when you mean tasting food.

Proefde is the past tense of proeven.

Dutch often uses the definite article where English would also use the:

• de saus = the sauce

In this sentence, it refers to a specific sauce Anna is dealing with, not sauce in general.

If you said just saus, that would sound incomplete here.

Again, this is the verb-second rule.

In the second clause, daarna comes first:

• daarna zette ze de dop weer stevig op de fles

Since daarna is in first position, the finite verb zette must come second, and the subject ze comes after it.

Compare:

• Ze zette daarna de dop op de fles.
• Daarna zette ze de dop op de fles.

Both are correct, but the word order changes depending on what comes first.

Daarna means after that or afterwards.

So here:

• en daarna zette ze de dop...
• = and after that she put the cap...

Dan can sometimes mean then, but daarna is more clearly about sequence in time: one thing happened, and after that the next thing happened.

Weer here means again or back.

In this sentence:

• de dop weer op de fles zetten
• = to put the cap back on the bottle

So weer shows that the cap was on the bottle before, then off, and now on again.

This is a very common use of weer in Dutch.

Yes, stevig often means firm, solid, or sturdy, but in context it can also work adverbially, meaning something like:

• firmly
• securely
• tightly

So:

• de dop stevig op de fles zetten

means she put the cap on the bottle firmly / tightly, so it was well closed.

This is natural Dutch.

Dutch uses op with lids, caps, and similar things in expressions like:

• de dop op de fles zetten = to put the cap on the bottle
• een deksel op de pan doen = to put a lid on the pan

English also says on the bottle, so this matches quite well here.

Using aan would not sound natural in this context.

De dop means the cap, lid, or top, depending on context.

For a bottle, dop usually means:

• screw cap
• bottle cap
• top

So in this sentence, it is the cap of the bottle containing the sauce.

Yes. Zette is the past tense of zetten, which means to put, to place, or to set.

So:

• ze zet de dop op de fles = she puts the cap on the bottle
• ze zette de dop op de fles = she put the cap on the bottle

This is a very common verb in Dutch.

Yes, absolutely.

That would be a more neutral word order:

• Ze proefde de saus met een eetlepel.

The original sentence:

• Met een eetlepel proefde Anna de saus

puts a little more focus on how she tasted it.

Both are grammatical. The difference is mainly emphasis and style.

Literally, yes:

• eten = to eat
• lepel = spoon
• eetlepel = tablespoon

But you should learn eetlepel as the normal word for tablespoon.

Similarly:

• theelepel = teaspoon

So met een eetlepel simply means with a tablespoon.