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Mock Caviare

A spread made from anchovies, garlic, lemon juice, salt, cayenne, and salad oil, served on bread or toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mock Caviare

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Pound the boned anchovies with the clove of garlic until smooth.

  2. Mix in the lemon juice or vinegar, salt, cayenne, and salad oil.

Serve

  1. Spread the mixture thinly on bread and butter or toast.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Garlic + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,893 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 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

Anchovies
Provide the main salty, savoury flavour and form the base of the paste.
Garlic
Adds sharp aroma that stands up to the rich anchovies.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the saltiness.
Salad oil
Adds fat that makes the paste smoother and easier to spread.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, lemon, pepper, bread):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, lemon, 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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