Skip to main content
Main

Anchovies on Toast

Anchovies on Toast is a simple appetizer of toasted bread topped with anchovies, hard-boiled eggs, parsley, and watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 469 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Anchovies on Toast

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.

Prepare the toast

  1. Toast slices of bread until golden brown.

  2. Butter the toasted bread generously.

  3. Cut the bread into 1.5-inch square pieces.

Assemble and bake

  1. Top each piece with a slice of hard-boiled egg and a boned anchovy.

  2. Sprinkle chopped parsley over the top.

  3. Place the assembled toast in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish with watercress around the edges.

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. Parsley + watercresstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Slices of bread
Forms the crisp base that holds the toppings.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the toast brown and taste savoury.
Hard-boiled eggs
Adds a soft, mild, creamy layer to the toast.
Boned anchovies
Provide a salty, savoury flavour that is central to the dish.

The step that matters

Baking the assembled toast. Ten minutes at 400°F is enough to warm the toppings and crisp the base. Baking longer can dry the bread and toughen the egg, so watch the toast closely.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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

More anchovy toast recipes

with Poached Eggs 5with Egg Yolk Cream 3 See all 93 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes