Skip to main content
Main

Devilled Sardines

A baked sardine dish coated in breadcrumbs, herbs, olive oil, and lemon.

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

Why it works: Olive and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Devilled Sardines

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the sardines in a shallow tin.

  3. Embed them in bread crumbs.

  4. Add a few savory herbs.

  5. Pour a little olive oil over them.

  6. Squeeze the juice of one or two lemons on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in the oven until heated through and slightly crispy.

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. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

  2. Bread + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines
Form the main body of the dish and provide its rich, savory flavor.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that helps the surface brown and crisp in the oven.
Olive oil
Adds fat that carries flavor and helps the crumbs brown while keeping the fish moist.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the rich flavor of the fish and oil.
Savory herbs
Add aromatic flavor that complements the fish.

The step that matters

Bake until heated through and only slightly crispy. Sardines are delicate and dry out quickly with prolonged heat, while the crumbs need enough heat to brown. Watching the oven keeps the fish moist and the topping crisp.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, olive):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, olive. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes