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Sardine Toast

A toasted bread topped with sardine paste and a sauce of Worcestershire, anchovy, cayenne, lemon, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and anchovy 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 ↓

Sardine Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Remove the bones and scales from the sardines, then pound them to a smooth paste with the butter.

  2. Cut the bread into ½-inch thick slices for croutons.

  3. Remove the crust from the slices.

  4. Fry the slices in butter until golden brown.

  5. Spread the sardine mixture on the croutons.

  6. Place the croutons in the oven.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Make a sauce with the remaining ingredients and boiling water.

  2. Simmer the sauce until the flour is cooked.

  3. Pour the sauce over the croutons.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines
Provide the main savoury flavour and a rich, fishy base for the topping.
Butter
Adds richness and helps fry the bread to golden browning.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it simmers.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury depth and a tangy flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the sauce until the flour is cooked. Flour must be simmered long enough for its starch to gelatinise and lose its raw, pasty taste. Stopping early leaves the sauce tasting floury and too thin.

“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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