Skip to main content
Main

Anchovy Toast

A toasted bread spread with a smooth anchovy and butter mixture, garnished with parsley or pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Anchovy Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the anchovy butter

  1. Remove the bones and skin from the anchovies.

  2. Pound the anchovies with 2 tablespoons of fine butter until smooth.

  3. Wash and split 3 anchovies.

  4. Pound them with some fresh butter.

  5. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Make and top the toast

  1. Cut slices of bread into desired shapes.

  2. Fry the slices in clarified butter.

  3. Spread the anchovy mixture on the cooled toast.

  4. Spread the mixture on toast or rusks.

  5. Quarter and wash additional anchovies.

  6. Lay the quartered anchovies on the toast.

  7. Garnish with parsley or pickles.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Provide the salty, savoury flavour that defines the toast and form the spread's base.
Fine butter
Binds the pounded anchovies into a smooth spread and adds richness to the topping.
Clarified butter
Fries the bread to a golden, crisp surface while adding a rich, nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve. Pounding alone leaves fibrous bits and lumps; pressing the mixture through a fine sieve yields the smooth, even texture the spread needs to spread evenly on warm or cooled toast.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Sagefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread. 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.

More anchovy toast recipes

with Poached Eggs 5with Egg Yolk Cream 3 See all 93 →

You might also like

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