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Oriental Canapes

Canapes made with lobster or crab meat, butter, spices, lemon juice, and toasted bread, topped with curry sauce and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Oriental Canapes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Pound the lobster or crab meat in a mortar.

  2. Mix the meat with butter, pepper, salt, mustard, cayenne, nutmeg, curry powder, and lemon juice.

Assemble the canapes

  1. Cut small rounds of toasted bread.

  2. Scoop out the centers of the bread rounds.

  3. Fill the bread rounds with the mixture.

  4. Cover the filled rounds with curry sauce.

  5. Sprinkle the rounds with hard bread crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the canapes in a 400°F (200°C) oven for a few minutes.

  2. Serve hot, garnished with parsley or watercress.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster or crab meat
Provides the main filling, giving the canapes their savoury seafood flavour and body.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the filling stay soft and spreadable.
Toasted bread
Forms the crisp edible case that holds the filling.
Hard bread crumbs
Sprinkled on top, they brown and crisp in the oven for a contrasting texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the seafood flavour and balances the rich butter.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, butter, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, bread, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, bread, parsley. 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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