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Eggs on Anchovy Toast

A toast topped with anchovy paste and a creamy egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Eggs on Anchovy Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until it bubbles.

  3. Add the milk and stir until you have a smooth white sauce.

Cook the eggs and serve

  1. Beat the eggs lightly and stir them into the sauce.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, stirring constantly until thick.

  3. Heap the sauce on the anchovy toast and serve immediately.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Spread + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they set, giving it a soft, custard-like body.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a roux that helps the milk form a smooth sauce.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness to the base of the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, adding moisture and body.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs into the sauce. Eggs set when heated, so they can curdle or turn grainy if the sauce is too hot or left unstirred. Constant stirring over gentle heat keeps the mixture smooth as it thickens.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, egg, spread, anchovy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, egg, spread, 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.

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