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Aberdeen Toast

A toasted oatcake topped with a buttered egg and bloater paste mixture, seasoned with cayenne and finished with browned crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Aberdeen Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make the oatcakes hot.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan.

Make the topping

  1. Add the eggs, bloater paste, and cayenne to the melted butter.

  2. Stir until thick.

Serve

  1. Pile the mixture on the hot oatcakes.

  2. Sprinkle with browned crumbs.

  3. Serve immediately.

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 + 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

Eggs
Thicken into a creamy, spreadable topping as they set with the warm butter.
Butter
Melts to carry flavour and gives the topping richness and a smooth texture.
Oatcakes
Serve as the crisp, sturdy base that holds the warm topping.
Bloater paste
Adds a salty, smoky fish flavour that is the dish's main savoury note.

The step that matters

Stir until thick. Egg yolks and white thicken as they warm and gently set. Heating too fast or too long can scramble them into lumps, so keep the heat low and stir constantly.

“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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