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Deviled Sardines

Deviled sardines are sardines cooked in butter with paprika, salt, and lemon juice, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Deviled Sardines

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish over medium heat until it is hissing hot.

  2. Add the sardines and cook until heated through, turning once.

  3. Season with salt and paprika, then add the lemon juice.

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

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

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

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

  3. 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
Form the main body of the dish, providing the rich, savoury fish flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and gently warming the sardines in the pan.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, oily flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Heating the sardines through. Sardines are delicate and oily. Cooking them only until heated through, turning once, keeps them moist and tender, while overcooking makes the flesh dry and tough.

“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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