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Canapes De Sardines

Canapés de Sardines are toasted bread topped with a sardine mixture and garnished with crayfish tails, gherkins, and pickled beetroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Canapes De Sardines

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the base

  1. Cut the bread into finger shapes and fry in butter until golden yellow.

Make the sardine filling

  1. Remove bones from 12 sardines and pound them in a mortar with ½ cup butter and 2 egg yolks.

  2. Season the mixture with pepper, mustard, chives, parsley, and tarragon.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread the sardine mixture over the fried bread.

  2. Top each piece with one of the remaining sardines.

  3. Place in a 350°F (175°C) oven for a few minutes.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with crayfish tails, gherkins, and pickled beetroot before serving.

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. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Chive + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together589 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mustard + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together587 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines
Provide the main savoury flavour and the body of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture to the filling.
Egg yolks
Bind the pounded sardines and butter into a smooth, cohesive paste.
Bread
Forms the crisp, golden base that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Pounding the sardine filling. Sardines must be pounded fully with the butter and egg yolks so the mixture becomes smooth and emulsified. Lumps or poor binding make the filling crumble or spread unevenly over the bread.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, egg, pepper, chive, parsley, 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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