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Anchovy Toast

A toast topped with anchovies, buttered toast, and a sauce of butter, mustard, tomato, and mushroom, garnished with hard‑boiled egg slices, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,719 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Anchovy Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare thin slices of buttered toast.

  2. Spread anchovies on top of the toast.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a chafing dish, melt the butter and mix in the dry mustard, tomato sauce, and mushroom sauce until smooth.

  2. Layer the hard-boiled egg slices in the sauce and sprinkle with salt and cayenne pepper.

  3. Heat the mixture and pour it over the anchovy toast, being careful not to break the egg slices.

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. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mustard + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,482 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Provide a salty, savoury flavour that stands out against the sauce and egg.
Butter
Melts into the sauce, adding richness and a smooth texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a soft, creamy texture and mild richness to the topping.
Tomato sauce
Adds sweetness and acidity to the sauce, giving it body and colour.
Dry mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent bite that balances the richness of the butter and eggs.

The step that matters

Heating and pouring the sauce over the toast. Heating the sauce gently keeps the butter emulsified and the sauce smooth, while careful pouring keeps the delicate egg slices intact on the toast.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, tomato, sauce, mushroom, egg, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, tomato, sauce, mushroom, egg, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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