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Anchovy Canapees

A small appetizer of toasted bread topped with anchovy butter, anchovy fillets, parsley, and egg yolk and white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

  1. Cut the bread into finger shapes.

  2. Fry the bread in clarified butter until light brown, then drain on a cloth.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Spread each piece of bread with a layer of anchovy butter.

  2. Top each with a small fillet of Gorgona anchovy.

  3. Arrange on a glass dish and garnish with chopped parsley and crumbled hard-boiled egg yolk and white.

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 + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  3. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Anchovy + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,702 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

White bread
Forms the crisp base that holds the anchovy topping.
Clarified butter
Fries the bread, adding fat for golden browning and a rich flavour.
Anchovy butter
Adds salty, savoury flavour and fat that softens the bread under the topping.
Gorgona anchovy fillets
Provide the main salty, savoury flavour on top of each canapé.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Adds rich, creamy texture and a mild flavour to the garnish.

The step that matters

Frying the bread until light brown. Frying in clarified butter gives browning and a crisp texture. Clarified butter has no milk solids to burn, so it can reach a golden colour without going dark or bitter. Drain well so the bread stays crisp under the topping.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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

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