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Poached Eggs and Anchovy

Poached eggs served on toasted bread spread with anchovy paste or butter, topped with Parmesan and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Poached Eggs and Anchovy

6 slices of toast, one egg each

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Cut out 6 rounds from the toasted bread, large enough to hold a poached egg.

  2. Butter the toasted bread and spread with anchovy paste or anchovy butter.

Poach and serve

  1. Poach the eggs.

  2. Place one poached egg on each piece of prepared toast.

  3. Sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese and a pinch of cayenne pepper.

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  4. Anchovy + parmesan cheesetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a soft, tender center that becomes a rich sauce when broken.
Anchovy paste or anchovy butter
Adds a salty, savory depth that enriches the toast and the egg.
Parmesan cheese
Melts and browns lightly, adding savory, nutty flavor on top.
Bread
Provides a crisp base that holds the egg and soaks up the yolk.

The step that matters

Poach the eggs. Eggs cook best in gently simmering water, which sets the white around the yolk while keeping the yolk soft. Boiling water makes the whites ragged and can break the yolk, so the egg loses its neat shape on the toast.

“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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