Skip to main content
Main

Anchovy Patties

A savory pastry dish made with anchovy butter, cream, egg yolks, pepper, and puff pastry, baked until golden.

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

Why it works: Anchovy and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,330 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Anchovy Patties

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Warm the anchovy butter or essence with cream and beaten egg yolks until it reaches the right consistency.

  2. Line patty pans with puff pastry.

  3. Fill the lined pans with the anchovy mixture.

Bake

  1. Cover with more puff pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 20 minutes.

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 + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Anchovy + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together798 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Pepper + anchovytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream mixture into a smooth custard-like filling when gently warmed.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the anchovy flavour into the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms flaky, layered shells that rise and brown in the oven.
Anchovy butter or essence of anchovy
Supplies the salty, savoury anchovy flavour that defines the patties.

The step that matters

Warming the filling with the egg yolks. Egg yolks set when heated, so warming them too fast can scramble them into lumps. Warm gently and stir until the mixture thickens to the right consistency.

“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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes