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Scotch Woodcock

A sandwich of buttered toast with minced anchovies, topped with a hot cream and egg yolk sauce, seasoned with cayenne pepper and lemon zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Scotch Woodcock

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Scotch Woodcock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the flesh of the anchovies.

  2. Butter the bread and toast it until hot.

  3. Layer the minced anchovies between the slices of toast.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, heat the cream and whisk in the beaten egg yolks until thickened.

  2. Pour the hot cream mixture over the toast and anchovies.

  3. Sprinkle with cayenne pepper and lemon zest, then 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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 flavour that is the dish's main character.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream into a custard-like sauce as they set with gentle heat.
Heavy cream
Forms the rich base of the sauce and carries the egg yolks.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the toast brown and taste savoury.
Bread
Acts as a crisp, absorbent base that holds the anchovies and sauce.

The step that matters

Whisking the egg yolks into the hot cream. If the cream is too hot or added too fast, the yolks scramble instead of thickening smoothly. Heat gently and whisk constantly so the proteins set into a smooth sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Strawberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, cream, egg, 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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