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Woodcock Toast

A toast topped with a mixture of browned chicken or duck livers, anchovies, butter, cream, egg yolks, sugar, paprika, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Woodcock Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the liver mixture

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the chicken or duck livers and anchovies.

  3. Cook until the livers are browned.

  4. Remove from heat.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the cream, egg yolks, castor sugar, paprika, and salt.

  2. Combine the liver mixture with the cream mixture.

  3. Blend until smooth.

  4. Serve the mixture on buttered toast.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 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

Chicken or duck livers
Form the smooth, rich body of the spread once blended.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the mixture into a smooth, creamy texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the texture of the spread.
Anchovies
Add savory depth and a salty, umami note.

The step that matters

Cook until the livers are browned. Browning builds savory flavour through the Maillard reaction, but overcooking makes livers dry and grainy, which harms the smooth finish the blended spread needs.

“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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