Name: Toast
Ingredients: several slices of bread; anchovy butter; anchovies; 1 hard-boiled egg; fresh parsley; capers

Why it works: Parsley and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

Cut the bread into even slices.
Spread anchovy butter on each slice.

Top the toast

Cut anchovies into small strips and lay the anchovy strips on the bread.
Chop the hard-boiled egg finely and spread the chopped egg over the anchovies.
Chop fresh parsley and sprinkle the chopped parsley on top.
Add capers here and there.
Arrange the toast on a dish with a few sprigs of parsley in the center.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Anchovy + caperstop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together473 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,260 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).
Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,330 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovy butter: Adds salty, savoury flavour and fat that moistens the bread.
Anchovies: Provide a salty, savoury flavour that is the main taste of the toast.
Hard-boiled egg: Adds a soft, rich texture and mild creaminess to the topping.

“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.