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Anchovy Relish

Anchovy relish is a paste made from anchovies, milk, clarified suet, and served on toast or biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,759 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Anchovy Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the anchovies

  1. Soak the anchovies in the milk, then split and remove the bones.

  2. Dry the anchovies thoroughly and place them in a mortar with the clarified suet.

  3. Pound the mixture to a paste.

Serve

  1. Spread the paste on dry toast or biscuits.

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. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Milk + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,332 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Beef + biscuittop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together197 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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 flavor that defines the relish.
Clarified beef suet
Adds fat that binds the pounded anchovies into a smooth, spreadable paste.
Milk
Soaking softens and mellows the anchovies, reducing their sharpness.

The step that matters

Drying the anchovies thoroughly. Excess moisture left on the anchovies would dilute the suet and stop the mixture from pounding into a stable, spreadable paste.

“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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