Name: Anchovy Toast
Ingredients: 2 hard-boiled eggs; 1 oz. butter; anchovy essence; gluten coffee biscuit

Why it works: Egg and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,330 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Anchovy Toast

Ingredients

2 hard-boiled eggs
1 oz. butter
anchovy essence
gluten coffee biscuit

Directions

Slice the gluten biscuit and cut it into small squares.
Cut the hard-boiled eggs in half and pound the yolks with the butter and enough anchovy essence to flavor.
Pass the mixture through a sieve and pile it on the squares of gluten biscuit.
Decorate with chopped egg whites and a little parsley.

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.

Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,330 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,697 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Anchovy + biscuittop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together60 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Butter + biscuittop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,009 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).