Skip to main content
Snack

Anchovy Canapees

A small appetizer of fried bread topped with anchovy butter, fillets, and egg yolk and white, garnished with parsley or pistachios and cress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Anchovy Canapees

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread and anchovies

  1. Cut the bread into oblong pieces and fry until light brown. Cool.

  2. Wash and bone the anchovies, then take two fillets from each.

Assemble

  1. Pound rough pieces of anchovy with the butter in a mortar.

  2. Spread the anchovy mixture on the fried bread.

  3. Lay the fillets across each piece and fill the spaces with chopped parsley or pistachios, sieved yolk, and chopped white.

  4. Serve on a dish and garnish with cress.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread
Fried bread forms the crisp, golden base that holds the anchovy topping.
Anchovies
Provide the salty, savoury flavour that defines the canapés.
Butter
Binds the pounded anchovy into a smooth, spreadable paste and adds richness.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Adds a soft, rich texture and mild flavour to the filling.
Hard-boiled egg white
Adds a firm, mild texture to the filling.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, 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.

You might also like

FrittersFritters56 recipesCrisp CrackersCrisp Crackers7 recipes