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Anchovy Toast

A toast topped with a mixture of hard‑boiled egg yolks, butter, anchovy essence, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 204 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Anchovy Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the gluten biscuits and cut them into small squares.

Make the topping

  1. Remove the yolks from the hard-boiled eggs and pound them in a mortar with the butter and enough anchovy essence to flavor.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve and pile it on the gluten biscuit squares.

Decorate

  1. Decorate with chopped egg whites and a little parsley.

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. Biscuit + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Anchovy + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,702 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks form the creamy base of the spread, while chopped whites add texture to the finished topping.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the yolk mixture become smooth and spreadable.
Anchovy essence
Provides a salty, savoury flavour that gives the spread its character.
Gluten coffee biscuits
Serve as the crisp base that holds the spread.

The step that matters

Pass the mixture through a sieve. Pounding yolks with butter can leave lumps. Pressing the mixture through a sieve breaks up remaining bits, giving a smooth, even spread that sits neatly on the biscuits.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, anchovy, coffee, biscuit):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, anchovy, coffee, biscuit. 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.

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