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Anchovy Toast

A toast spread with a paste of anchovies, butter, spices, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 121 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Anchovy Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Beat the anchovies and fresh butter together in a mortar until you have a smooth paste.

  2. Season the paste with Cayenne pepper, curry powder, and mustard to taste.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the seasoned paste on biscuits.

  2. Warm the biscuits in a Dutch oven before serving.

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. Mustard + biscuittop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together121 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Butter + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. 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 a salty, savoury depth that flavours the whole paste.
Fresh butter
Binds the anchovies into a smooth, spreadable paste and adds richness.
Biscuits
Serve as the crisp base that carries the paste.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, biscuit):

  1. Spinachfits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Arrowrootfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, biscuit. 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.

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