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Canape Lorenzo

A crab canapé topped with a creamy sauce and melted butter, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Crab and meat work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 448 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Canape Lorenzo

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the crab filling

  1. Fry the chopped onions in butter over low heat until soft, but do not brown.

  2. Add flour and blend well.

  3. Stir in the cream until smooth.

  4. Mix in the picked crab meat.

  5. Season with salt and cayenne.

  6. Let the mixture cool.

Make the sauce

  1. Blend butter and flour for the sauce.

  2. Add cream to the sauce.

  3. Stir the sauce until smooth.

  4. Mix in Parmesan cheese, nutmeg, and beaten egg yolks.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place crab mixture on toast slices.

  2. Cover with sauce.

  3. Drizzle with melted butter.

  4. Bake in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for 5 minutes.

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. Crab + meattop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

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

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Cream + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  5. Butter + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Picked crab meat
Forms the main filling and supplies the savoury flavour of the canapé.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and help it set to a creamy, custard-like texture when baked.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth base for the filling and sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the filling and sauce a smooth texture.
Parmesan cheese
Adds salty, savoury flavour and helps the topping brown as it bakes.
White onions
Add sweetness and aroma when softened gently in butter.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks scramble and curdle when they meet hot liquid. Cooling the filling and blending the yolks into the sauce keeps the topping smooth and creamy rather than grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, crab, meat, pepper, sauce):

  1. Mustardfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, crab, meat, pepper, sauce. 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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