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Curried Toasts with Anchovies

A toasted bread topped with curry paste and anchovy fillets, baked briefly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Curried Toasts with Anchovies

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a gentle oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Toast the bread

  1. Fry the bread slices in butter or olive oil until lightly golden.

  2. Lift the slices onto a dish and spread a thin layer of curry paste on top.

Top and bake

  1. Place the toasts in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 3-4 minutes.

  2. Lay 2-3 fillets of anchovies on each toast.

  3. Return the toasts to the oven for an additional 2 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately, adding cayenne pepper for extra heat if desired.

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. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Provides a crisp, sturdy base that holds the topping.
Butter or olive oil
Fat that fries the bread, adding browning and rich flavour.
Curry paste
Adds spiced aroma and flavour to the toast surface.
Anchovies
Contribute a salty, savoury depth that stands out against the bread.

The step that matters

Returning the toasts to the oven. A short second bake warms the anchovies and softens them slightly without drying the bread. Overbaking makes the bread hard and the anchovies brittle, so timing matters.

“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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