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Lobster Canapes

A chilled appetizer of lobster meat mixed with egg yolks, butter, and seasonings, served on sautéed stale bread and garnished with egg whites and olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Lobster Canapes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lobster mixture

  1. Pound the lobster meat in a mortar.

  2. Add an equal quantity of mashed hard boiled egg yolks and moisten with melted butter.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, and French mustard, then moisten with beef extract.

Prepare the bread

  1. Cut stale bread into slices and remove the crusts.

  2. Cut the slices into fancy shapes and sauté in butter until delicately browned.

  3. Cool the bread, spread with the lobster mixture, and garnish with rings cut from hard boiled egg whites and finely chopped olives.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Forms the main body and flavour of the spread.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Add a soft, creamy texture that binds the lobster mixture.
Melted butter
Adds richness and moisture to the lobster mixture.
Stale bread
Provides a crisp base that holds the spread.

The step that matters

Sautéing the bread until delicately browned. Browning in butter adds toasty flavour and firmness, while too much heat can scorch the butter and bread, turning them bitter and making the base brittle.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, meat, egg, butter, pepper, beef, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, egg, butter, pepper, beef, bread. 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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