Name: Curried Toasts with Anchovies
Ingredients: 4 slices of bread, crusts removed; 2 tablespoons clarified butter or pure olive oil; Captain White’s curry paste; 2 anchovies

Why it works: Bread and butter 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

Ingredients

4 slices of bread, crusts removed
2 tablespoons clarified butter or pure olive oil
Captain White’s curry paste
2 anchovies

Directions

Prepare

Heat the clarified butter or olive oil in a pan.
Toast the bread slices lightly, about ½ inch thick and 2.5 inches square.

Assemble and broil

Place the toasted bread on a dish and spread a thick layer of curry paste on top.
Broil the toasts for 4 minutes.
Top each toast with 2 anchovies before serving.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread: Forms the crisp base that holds the curry paste and anchovies.
Curry paste: Provides the main flavour and, under heat, browns and deepens on the surface.
Anchovies: Add a salty, savoury note that contrasts with the spiced paste.
Clarified butter or olive oil: Carries fat into the pan to help the bread toast evenly and richly.

The step that matters

Broiling the toasts. Broiling browns the curry paste and can scorch thin bread quickly. Watch the toasts closely so the paste blisters and darkens without burning, which would make it bitter.

“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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Curried Toasts with Anchovies