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Avohovy Toast

Toast spread with a paste of pounded anchovies and butter, optionally seasoned with mustard, curry powder or cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Avohovy Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the anchovies

  1. Bone and wash the anchovies.

Make the paste

  1. Pound the anchovies in a mortar with a little fresh butter.

  2. Optionally, add made mustard, curry powder, or a few grains of Cayenne while pounding the anchovies.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Serve

  1. Spread the anchovy mixture on a slice of 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. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + mustardtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 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

Anchovies
Provide the main salty, savoury flavour of the spread.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and smoothness, helping the pounded anchovies form a spreadable paste.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a sieve. Pushing the pounded paste through a sieve breaks up any remaining fibres and lumps, giving a smooth, even spread instead of a coarse, stringy texture.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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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