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Anchovy Biscuits

Anchovy biscuits are crisp crackers topped with a seasoned anchovy paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and capers share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Anchovy Biscuits

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the paste

  1. Pound the anchovy fillets with the butter in a mortar.

  2. Add cayenne pepper, nutmeg, and essence of anchovies.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the paste on water biscuits.

  2. Place the biscuits in a 400°F (200°C) oven until hot.

  3. Garnish with strips of filleted anchovies and capers.

  4. Serve on a folded napkin.

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. Biscuit + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together18 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Nutmeg + biscuittop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together368 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  3. Nutmeg + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together211 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Anchovy + caperstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovy fillets
Provide the main salty, savoury flavour of the paste.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the paste a smooth, spreadable texture.
Essence of anchovies
Intensifies the anchovy flavour throughout the paste.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a sieve. Pushing the paste through a sieve breaks down any remaining fibres and lumps, giving a smooth, even spread. Lumps left in the paste will tear the biscuits and leave an uneven surface.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (anchovy, butter, pepper, biscuit, capers):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against anchovy, butter, pepper, biscuit, capers. 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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