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Olives a L'alsacienne

Olives stuffed with foie gras, egg yolks, aspic, and topped with ham and bread, garnished with herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Olives a L'alsacienne

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the olives and filling

  1. Remove the pits from the olives.

  2. Cut the hard-boiled eggs in half.

  3. Remove the yolks from the halves.

  4. Trim the egg whites to about half an inch high.

  5. Pound the foie gras with two yolks.

  6. Season the mixture.

  7. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  8. Fill the olives with the mixture using a piping bag.

Set the molds

  1. Coat olive-shaped molds with aspic.

  2. Decorate the molds with tarragon and chervil leaves.

  3. Place an olive in each mold.

  4. Fill each mold with aspic.

  5. Let the aspic set.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the remaining filling with leftover aspic.

  2. Cut rounds from the toasted bread.

  3. Spread the rounds with butter.

  4. Top the rounds with chopped ham.

  5. Cover the buttered side of the egg whites with the filling.

  6. Unmold the olives.

  7. Place the egg whites on the bread rounds.

  8. Top each round with an olive.

  9. Garnish with parsley sprigs and a pinch of paprika.

  10. Serve.

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. Chervil + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  5. Olive + tarragontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Foie gras
Provides a rich, smooth, fatty filling that carries the flavour of the dish.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks blended with foie gras thicken and bind the filling; whites form the base.
Aspic jelly
Gelatin-based setting liquid that holds the molds and glazes the olives.
Butter
Spread on the bread so it stays moist and carries the topping without soaking through.
Spanish olives
Provide a salty, briny contrast that cuts through the rich filling.

The step that matters

Let the aspic set. Aspic is gelatin-based and must be fully set before the olives are unmolded; if it is still soft, the shapes slump and the decoration smears.

Swap the chervil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, egg, ham, pepper, bread, butter, tarragon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Chervilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, egg, ham, pepper, bread, butter, tarragon. 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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