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Anchovy Toast

A toasted bread topped with a warm anchovy and cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Anchovy Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Butter the toasted bread.

  2. Spread a little anchovy paste over the toast.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the egg yolks and cream; heat gently to thicken without boiling.

  2. Season with cayenne pepper and pour over the hot toast.

  3. Simmer 3 ounces of butter, 1 teaspoon of anchovy paste, and pepper until thick.

  4. Add 1 teaspoon of flour if desired.

  5. Serve the sauce over the buttered toast very hot.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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 into a rich, smooth sauce as they set with gentle heat.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the yolk sauce a soft, silky texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the sauce turn thick and glossy when simmered.
Anchovy paste
Adds a salty, savoury depth of flavour to the toast and sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the yolk and cream gently. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but above their setting point they scramble into lumps. Keeping the heat low and never letting the mixture boil keeps the sauce smooth and pourable.

“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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