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Anchovy Toast

A toasted bread topped with a seasoned anchovy paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 paste

  1. Remove the bones from the anchovies, wash, and scrape them well.

  2. Chop, pound, and press the anchovies through a sieve.

  3. Mix an equal quantity of butter with the anchovies.

  4. Add cayenne pepper to taste.

Fry the bread

  1. Fry the slices of bread in butter.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the anchovy paste on the toast, heat before the fire, and serve very hot.

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. Pepper + breadtop 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

Anchovies
Provide the salty, savory flavor that defines the paste.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and gives the anchovies a smooth, spreadable body.
Slices of bread
Form a crisp, sturdy base that holds the paste.

The step that matters

Spreading the paste while the toast is hot. Warm toast softens the butter-based paste so it spreads evenly and its aroma is released; a cold, firm paste spreads unevenly and tastes flatter.

“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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