Name: Savoury Anchovy Toast
Ingredients: 12 Gorgona anchovies, washed, drained, and boned; a few sprigs of parsley; 1 small shallot; a sprig or two of chives; a few sprigs of tarragon; a dust of cayenne pepper; lemon juice to taste; a little sweet oil; buttered toast

Why it works: Shallot and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 450 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Savoury Anchovy Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

Pound the anchovies with parsley, shallot, chives, tarragon, and cayenne pepper.
Flavour the mixture with lemon juice.
Moisten the mixture with sweet oil.

Serve

Spread the mixture on hot buttered toast cut into fingers.
Garnish with fresh parsley.
Serve on a folded napkin or dish paper.

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.

Shallot + chivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together450 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together602 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,563 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies: Provide the salty, savoury base flavour of the paste.
Sweet oil: Adds moisture and smooths the pounded mixture so it spreads easily.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich, salty anchovy flavour.
Buttered toast: Gives a crisp, warm base that holds the topping.

Swap the chive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, shallot, tarragon, pepper, lemon):

Chivethe original
Kalefits about as well
Lettucefits less well
Arrowrootfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, shallot, tarragon, pepper, lemon. 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.