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Eggs and Anchovies

A scrambled egg dish flavored with minced anchovies and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Eggs and Anchovies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the scrambled eggs

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

  2. Add the cream and heat until hot.

  3. Stir in the beaten eggs and cook until they begin to thicken.

  4. Add the anchovies and cayenne pepper, stirring constantly.

  5. Cook until the mixture reaches the consistency of ordinary scrambled eggs.

Serve

  1. Serve on buttered toast or fried bread.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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
Set into soft curds that form the body of the dish.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth that seasons the eggs from within.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the eggs soft and tender.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and keeps the eggs from sticking to the pan.

The step that matters

Cook until the mixture reaches the consistency of ordinary scrambled eggs. Eggs keep setting after they leave the heat, so pulling the pan off while the curds still look slightly wet lets them finish gently and stay creamy instead of dry and rubbery.

“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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