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Eggs and Anchovies

Eggs and anchovies are cooked together and served on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Eggs and Anchovies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl and beat them with pepper, salt, and minced onion.

Cook and serve

  1. In a small saucepan, heat the butter and milk.

  2. Add the egg mixture to the saucepan and stir until it thickens.

  3. Prepare hot buttered toast and place the egg mixture on top.

  4. Lay a fillet of anchovy crosswise on each piece of toast.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Egg + anchovytop 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. Onion + anchovytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a soft, creamy mass as they thicken with gentle heat.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth texture to the eggs and enriches the toast.
Milk
Loosens the eggs slightly, keeping the mixture tender rather than dry.
Fillets of anchovy
Add a salty, savoury flavour that contrasts with the rich eggs.

The step that matters

Stir the eggs until they thicken. Eggs set when their proteins coagulate under heat. Cooking too hard or too long makes them grainy and watery, so keep the heat moderate and stir constantly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, butter, milk, anchovy. 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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