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Eggs with Anchovy Paste

A creamy anchovy-flavored egg mixture served on 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 with Anchovy Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Make a cream sauce by melting butter, adding flour, and whisking in milk until thickened.

  2. Stir in anchovy paste.

Finish and serve

  1. Chop hard-boiled eggs into good-sized pieces and mix into the sauce.

  2. Season with pepper and salt.

  3. Serve the mixture on 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Anchovy + eggtop 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour as it melts with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a cream sauce as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Anchovy paste
Adds a salty, savoury depth that flavours the whole mixture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the bulk and soft, rich texture of the filling.

The step that matters

Whisking milk into the butter and flour. Adding the milk gradually while whisking keeps the flour smooth and lumps out. Whisking until the sauce thickens ensures the flour is fully cooked and the sauce has the body needed to hold the eggs.

“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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