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Stuffed Anchovies

Anchovies filled with a mixture of cooked fish, breadcrumbs, and egg yolks, then battered and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and fish work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 370 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Stuffed Anchovies

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Split open the anchovies, wash them well in white wine, and remove the bones.

  2. Mince a little cooked fish and place it in a bowl with fine breadcrumbs.

  3. Add egg yolks to the fish and breadcrumbs to form a paste.

Stuff and fry

  1. Stuff the anchovies with the mixture.

  2. Dip the stuffed anchovies into frying batter.

  3. Plunge them into a frying pan of boiling fat and fry until light in color.

  4. Remove when done, drain, and arrange on a dish.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with fried parsley and serve.

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. White wine + fishtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. White wine + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Fish + parsleytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 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

Egg yolks
Bind the fish and breadcrumbs into a paste that holds its shape when stuffed.
Fine breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and give the filling body so it does not run out during frying.
Frying batter
Forms a crisp coating that seals the anchovy and browns in the hot fat.
Boiling fat
Cooks the coated anchovies quickly, crisping the batter and setting the filling.

The step that matters

Plunge them into a frying pan of boiling fat and fry until light in color.. The fat must be hot enough to set the batter quickly; if it is too cool, the coating absorbs grease and the filling can leak out or turn soggy before the batter is firm.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, fish, egg):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, fish, egg. 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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