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Sardine Canapes

A fried stale bread slice topped with a warm sardine and egg mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sardine Canapes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove sardines from the tin and mince them very finely.

  2. In a bowl, mix sardines with flour, Worcestershire sauce, tomato ketchup, essence of anchovies, eggs, cayenne pepper, and the butter from the tin.

  3. Heat the mixture in a saucepan over low heat until warm and thickened, but do not boil.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the slices of stale bread in boiling fat or ghee until golden.

  2. Spread the sardine mixture on the fried bread and serve 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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Sardines
Provide the main savoury flavour and the bulk of the filling.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it thicken when gently heated.
Flour
Helps thicken the filling and give it a smoother body.
Stale bread
Forms the crisp fried base that holds the topping.

The step that matters

Heating the mixture without boiling. Eggs in the filling thicken when gently heated but can curdle or turn grainy if boiled, so low heat keeps the mixture smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sauce, ketchup, egg, pepper, bread. 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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