Skip to main content
Main

Petites Condoles a I’Anchois.

A small, baked pastry filled with anchovy mixture, coated with breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Petites Condoles a I’Anchois.

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pastry

  1. Mix the flour and 1½ ounces of butter until fine.

  2. Add the anchovy essence, cochineal, cayenne, and 1 beaten egg; work into a stiff paste.

  3. Roll out the paste thinly and line buttered boat-shaped moulds.

  4. Trim the edges, prick with a fork, and fill the moulds three-quarters full with the filling.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine cornflour and milk; stir over heat until boiling.

  2. Add 2 egg yolks and let cool slightly.

  3. Whip 1 egg white to stiff peaks and whip the cream.

  4. Mix the anchovy essence, cayenne, and chopped anchovies with the cornflour mixture; fold in the cream and egg white.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the moulds and sprinkle with breadcrumbs.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 15 minutes.

  3. Serve on a hot dish with a folded napkin or dish paper.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the pastry shells that hold the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the pastry, helping it stay short and crumbly.
Eggs
Bind the pastry and, as yolks and whipped white, set and lighten the filling.
Cornflour
Thickens the milk into a smooth base that gives the filling body.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, lighter texture to the filling when folded in.
Anchovies
Provide the main salty, savoury flavour of the filling.

The step that matters

Folding in the cream and egg white. Whipped cream and egg white hold air that gives the filling lightness. Overmixing deflates them, so the moulds bake up dense instead of light.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes