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Somerset Canapes

Canapes made from 24‑hour‑old white bread topped with a butter‑soft cheese spread, seasoned with salt, and garnished with olives and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Somerset Canapes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Cut the bread into ¼‑inch slices.

  2. Shape the slices with a small cutter or desired shape.

Make the cheese spread

  1. Cream the butter.

  2. Mix in the soft cheese until blended.

  3. Season the mixture with salt.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Spread the cheese mixture on the bread slices.

  2. Garnish the canapes with a border of finely chopped olives.

  3. Place a small piece of pepper in the center of each canape.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Bread + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture to the cheese mixture.
Soft cheese
Forms the creamy, savoury body of the spread that sits on the bread.
24-hour-old white bread
Provides a firmer base that holds the spread and shapes cleanly without crumbling.

“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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