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Dessert

Anchovy Fillets

A simple hors d'oeuvre of halved anchovies cut into fillets, garnished with parsley, hard‑boiled egg, capers, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Anchovy Fillets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut each halved anchovy into two or three fillets.

  2. Arrange the fillets in a lattice pattern on a hors-d'oeuvre dish.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with chopped parsley and alternating pieces of hard-boiled egg white and yolk.

  2. Add a few capers on top of the fillets.

  3. Drizzle moderately with oil.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

  3. Egg + caperstop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 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

Anchovies
Provide the main savoury, salty flavour and the fillet texture of the dish.
Oil
Adds richness and moisture, and carries the flavour of the anchovies across the plate.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds mild, creamy richness and contrasting texture against the salty fish.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Dillfits about as well
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Capersthe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, 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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