Name: Anchovy Butter
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons anchovy paste; ½ cup creamed butter or mayonnaise sauce; Cayenne pepper to taste; White or brown bread; Watercress or parsley for garnish

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 Butter

Ingredients

2 tablespoons anchovy paste
½ cup creamed butter or mayonnaise sauce
Cayenne pepper to taste
White or brown bread
Watercress or parsley for garnish

Directions

Make the anchovy butter

Pound anchovy paste and butter in a mortar until smooth, or mix well in a bowl with a wooden spoon.
Season the mixture with cayenne pepper to taste.

Assemble and serve

Spread the anchovy mixture on thin slices of bread.
Cover half of the slices with creamed butter or mayonnaise sauce and press together.
Trim the edges and cut into circles, squares, or triangles.
Serve on a folded napkin garnished with watercress or 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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together983 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,260 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).
Anchovy + watercresstop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together63 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,697 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovy paste: Supplies the salty, savoury anchovy flavour that defines the spread.
Creamed butter or mayonnaise sauce: Adds fat and richness, softening the anchovy paste into a spreadable texture.
Bread: Provides a sturdy base that carries the spread and holds the sandwich together.

“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.