Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Savoury

A sardine grilled in butter and cayenne pepper served on buttered toast with tomato sauce.

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

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Tomato Savoury

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the components

  1. Grill the sardine in 1 tablespoon of butter and cayenne pepper until cooked.

  2. Toast the bread and spread 1 tablespoon of butter on top.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the grilled sardine on the hot buttered toast.

  2. Pour the tomato sauce over the sardine.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sardine
Provides the main savoury, oily fish that the toast and sauce complement.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the toast and fish brown for extra flavour.
Bread
Gives a sturdy, absorbent base that holds the sardine and sauce.
Tomato sauce
Adds moisture and acidity that balance the rich, oily fish.

The step that matters

Grilling the sardine in butter. Butter's milk solids brown quickly and can burn over high heat, turning bitter. Moderate heat lets the fish cook through while the butter browns gently for flavour.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Mustardfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, bread, sauce. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes