Skip to main content
Main

Devilled Sardines

Sardines served on buttered toast with a mustard‑lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Devilled Sardines

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim and butter slices of toast.

  2. Heat sardines in a pan with their oil until hot, but do not cook.

  3. In a bowl, mix melted butter, mustard, salt, cayenne, and lemon juice.

Assemble and serve

  1. Split the hot sardines and place them on the toast.

  2. Baste the sardines with the sauce and serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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, oily flavour and the bulk of the topping.
Melted butter
Adds richness and moisture to the sauce, carrying the seasonings over the fish.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the fish and butter.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the oily sardines.
Cayenne pepper
Adds gentle heat that gives the sauce its characteristic kick.

The step that matters

Heat the sardines without cooking them. Sardines are already cooked and become dry and rubbery if overheated. Warming them just until hot keeps them moist and tender, and keeps their oil from turning bitter.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, lemon. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes