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Devilled Sardines

A quick sardine dish flavored with mustard, cayenne, and butter, served on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Devilled Sardines

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mustard

  1. Make the mustard with vinegar instead of water, and stir in cayenne and salt.

  2. Rub the sardines with the mustard mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the sardines in a little butter or grill them.

  2. Cut the toast into fingers, place a sardine on each piece, and serve hot.

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 + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines
Provide the main fish flavour and the body of the dish.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the fish.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the sardines brown lightly when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the sardines in a little butter or grill them. Cooking the sardines over steady, moderate heat until lightly browned gives flavour and a firm texture. Too much heat or too long can dry the fish and toughen it.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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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