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Norwegian Anchovies

Toasted bread topped with anchovies, bloater paste, parsley butter, and anchovy essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Norwegian Anchovies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Heat the butter in a pan.

  2. Fry the pieces of bread until light brown.

  3. Spread each piece thinly with bloater paste.

  4. Trim the anchovies and grill them on a greased gridiron.

Make the butters

  1. Pound the parsley with 2 oz of butter.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix 2 oz of butter with the hard boiled yolk and a few drops of anchovy essence.

  3. Make two paper cones and fill one with green butter and the other with anchovy butter.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place one anchovy on each crouton of bread and serve hot.

  2. For cold serving, allow the dish to cool.

  3. Force the butter through the cones in alternate colors across the anchovy toast.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  3. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,702 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Provide the main savoury, salty flavour and the topping of the toast.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the bread a moist, rich texture.
Bread
Forms the crisp base that the paste and anchovies rest on.
Bloater paste
Spread on the bread to add a strong, savoury fish flavour under the anchovy.
Hard boiled egg yolk
Mashed into the anchovy butter to give it a smooth, creamy body.

The step that matters

Frying the bread until light brown. Bread that is pale stays soft and soaks up the spread, while over-browned bread turns bitter. Light, even browning gives a crisp base that holds its topping.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, egg, anchovy):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, egg, anchovy. 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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