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Eggs and Anchovy

A sandwich of sliced hard-boiled eggs and anchovies spread with mayonnaise on bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Eggs and Anchovy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the eggs until very hard, then cool them in cold water for 5 minutes before peeling.

  2. Slice each egg into 4 or 5 pieces.

  3. Wash and bone the anchovies, then dry them well.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread mayonnaise on the bread.

  2. Top each piece of bread with one slice of egg and one anchovy.

  3. Arrange the egg pieces so they remain intact when the sandwiches are cut.

  4. Serve on a paper or napkin designed for sandwiches.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Egg + white peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Bread + white peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together925 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the main filling, adding body and a firm, mild texture to each sandwich.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth that contrasts with the richness of the egg and mayonnaise.
Mayonnaise
Adds moisture and richness, binding the filling and softening the bread.

The step that matters

Arrange the egg pieces so they remain intact when the sandwiches are cut. Hard-boiled egg whites and yolks are fragile once sliced, so placing pieces carefully on the mayonnaise keeps them from crumbling or shifting when the sandwich is cut.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread. 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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