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Bread

Curried Toasts with Anchovies

A toasted bread topped with currie paste and anchovy fillets, baked briefly and optionally seasoned with cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Curried Toasts with Anchovies

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a gentle oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Fry the bread

  1. Lightly fry the bread slices in butter or olive oil until golden.

Top and bake

  1. Transfer the fried bread to a dish and spread a thin layer of currie-paste on top.

  2. Place the toasts in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 3-4 minutes.

  3. Top each toast with 2-3 fillets of anchovies.

  4. Return the toasts to the oven for an additional 2 minutes.

  5. Serve immediately, adding cayenne pepper for extra heat if desired.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread slices
Provide a crisp, golden base that holds the toppings without going soggy.
Fillets of anchovies
Add a salty, savoury flavour that gives the toasts their main character.
Captain white's currie-paste
Adds spicy, aromatic flavour and a moist layer that carries the toppings.
Good butter or very pure olive oil
Fat that browns the bread and adds rich flavour as it fries.

The step that matters

Frying the bread to golden. Frying in fat until golden drives browning and toasting, which creates a crisp surface. Too little heat leaves the bread soft and greasy, while too much browns the outside before the centre cooks.

“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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