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Sardines on Toast with Cheese

A simple dish of sardines served on buttered toast topped with grated Parmesan cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Sardines on Toast with Cheese

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

  1. Prepare thin slices of crisp, buttered toast.

  2. Drain the oil from the sardines, then skin and split them.

Assemble and bake

  1. Lay the sardines on the toast.

  2. Optionally, coat the sardines with grated Parmesan before heating.

  3. Set in the oven at 400°F (200°C) until thoroughly hot, being careful not to let the toast dry out.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately on a hot plate.

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. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Bread + parmesan cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together577 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines
Provide the savoury, oily fish that forms the main flavour and filling of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the toast brown and crisp as it is heated.
Bread
Forms the crisp base that holds the sardines and soaks up their oil.
Grated parmesan cheese
Adds salty, savoury flavour and browns on the surface when heated.

The step that matters

Heating the toast without drying it out. Toast left too long in the oven loses moisture and turns hard and brittle, while the sardines need enough heat to become thoroughly hot. Watching the time keeps the base crisp but tender.

“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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