Skip to main content
Main

Savoury Toasts

Savory toasts made with bread, butter, anchovy pulp, egg yolks, anchovy sauce, sherry, white pepper, sea salt, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Savoury Toasts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the toasts

  1. Fry the bread slices in butter until golden brown and arrange on a hot dish.

  2. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a saucepan over boiling water. Stir in the anchovy pulp and let it thicken.

  3. Pour the thickened anchovy mixture over the toasts.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Melt butter on a hot plate. Add beaten egg yolks.

  2. Stir in anchovy sauce until pale pink. Mix in sherry.

  3. Dip hot toasted bread slices into the mixture and 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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Provides the crisp, golden base that holds the anchovy topping.
Anchovy pulp
Supplies the salty, savoury anchovy flavour and thickens when heated.
Raw egg yolks
Thicken the mixture into a smooth, rich coating through gentle heating.
Butter
Adds richness and browning to the toasts and carries flavour in the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot. Keeping the heat gentle lets them thicken smoothly into a coating rather than curdling.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, anchovy, egg, sauce, sherry, cream):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, anchovy, egg, sauce, sherry, cream. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes