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Anchovy Canapees, Princess- Style

A small appetizer of anchovy strips arranged on glass, topped with egg, parsley, onions, capers, beetroot, and sweet oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 231 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Anchovy Canapees, Princess- Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the anchovy fillets into small strips.

  2. Arrange the strips in a lattice-work fashion on small glass dishes.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with groups of hard-boiled egg whites, yolks, chopped parsley, chopped button onions, French capers, and chopped pickled beetroot.

  2. Drizzle a little sweet oil over the entire dish.

  3. Serve immediately.

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 + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + beetroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together745 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Anchovy + caperstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovy fillets
Provide the salty, savoury base flavour and the lattice structure of the canapé.
Hard-boiled egg whites
Add mild, soft texture and a neutral bulk to the garnish.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add rich, creamy texture that balances the salty anchovy.
French capers
Add briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the egg and oil.
Chopped pickled beetroot
Adds sharp acidity and a contrasting colour and crunch.
Sweet oil
Adds fat and moisture, giving the dish a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (anchovy, egg, parsley, capers, beetroot):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against anchovy, egg, parsley, capers, beetroot. 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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