Name: Anchovy Toast
Ingredients: 4 slices of bread; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 teaspoon dry mustard; 2 tablespoons tomato sauce; 1 teaspoon mushroom sauce; 4 hard-boiled eggs, sliced; coarse sea salt; cayenne pepper

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Anchovy Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare thin slices of buttered toast and keep them hot.
In a chafing dish, melt the butter and mix in the dry mustard, tomato sauce, and mushroom sauce until smooth.
Layer the sliced hard-boiled eggs in the sauce and sprinkle with coarse sea salt and cayenne pepper.
Heat the mixture and pour it over the anchovy toast, being careful not to break the egg slices.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,719 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, tomato, sauce, mushroom, egg, pepper):

Capsicumfits better
Asparagusfits better
Shallotfits better
Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, tomato, sauce, mushroom, egg, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.