Skip to main content
Main

Sardines on Toast

Sardines served on buttered toast with a sauce of butter, anchovy paste, white wine, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: White wine and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Sardines on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the sardines

  1. Combine butter, anchovy paste, and white wine in a chafing dish and cook over low heat until melted.

  2. Add the sardines to the mixture and heat gently.

Serve

  1. Place each sardine on a slice of buttered toast.

  2. Serve very 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. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. White wine + white peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together407 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl butyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Anchovy + white peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together172 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. White wine + anchovytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 rich, tender body of the dish.
Anchovy paste
Adds a deep, savoury saltiness that rounds out the sardine flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the warm sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery mixture and balances the fish.

The step that matters

Heat the sardines gently. Over high heat the sauce can separate or turn greasy and the delicate fish can toughen and dry out. Gentle heat keeps the butter emulsified and the sardines moist.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, butter, anchovy. 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.

More sardines on toast recipes

Broiled 3 See all 22 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes