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Bombay Toast

A toast spread made from anchovy paste, butter, eggs, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Bombay Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Wash, bone, and pound the anchovies with the butter until it forms a paste.

Cook and serve

  1. Warm the mixture in a saucepan.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and season with salt and cayenne pepper.

  3. Spread 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 + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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

Anchovies
Provide the salty, savory depth that defines the topping.
Butter
Binds the pounded anchovies into a smooth paste and adds richness.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the warm mixture and add richness and body.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg yolks to the warm mixture. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but if the mixture is too hot they can scramble into lumps. Keep the heat low and stir steadily so the topping stays smooth.

“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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