Skip to main content
Main

Savory Toast

A toasted bread spread with melted butter, mustard, vinegar, anchovy sauce, pepper, cayenne, and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Savory Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add mustard, vinegar, anchovy sauce, pepper, cayenne, and cheese, then stir until the cheese is dissolved.

Serve

  1. Spread the mixture on toasted bread and serve.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Butter
Melts to form the rich base that carries the other flavors and keeps the topping spreadable.
Cheese
Melts into the butter to give the topping its body, savoriness, and spreadable texture.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that cuts through the rich butter and cheese.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and pungency that balances the richness of the butter and cheese.
Anchovy sauce
Contributes deep savory, salty umami flavor to the topping.

The step that matters

Stir until the cheese is dissolved. Cheese can turn stringy or grainy if it overheats or melts unevenly. Keeping the heat gentle and stirring steadily lets the cheese emulsify smoothly into the warm butter and vinegar.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mustard, vinegar, anchovy, sauce, pepper, cheese):

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mustard, vinegar, anchovy, sauce, pepper, cheese. 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.

You might also like

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipes