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Tongue Canape

A toasted graham bread canapé topped with sliced tongue, creamed butter, capers, salt, cayenne, and watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and watercress share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 60 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tongue Canape

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Toast triangles of graham bread.

  2. Spread the toasted bread with butter.

Make the tongue topping

  1. Cut cooked tongue into small pieces.

  2. Mix tongue with creamed butter and add 2 tablespoons of capers for each ½ cup of tongue.

  3. Spread the mixture on the buttered bread.

Season and garnish

  1. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and cayenne pepper.

  2. Garnish with chopped 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. Capers + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Capers + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Bread + caperstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked tongue
Provides the main savoury meat flavour and the body of the spread.
Creamed butter
Binds the tongue into a smooth spreadable mixture and adds richness.
Graham bread
Forms the crisp toasted base that holds the topping.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the rich butter and meat.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, pepper, watercress):

  1. Capersthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper, watercress. 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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