Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Canapes

Lobster canapes are toasted bread topped with a lobster and egg yolk mixture, garnished with egg white rings and olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lobster Canapes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lobster mixture

  1. Pound the lobster meat in a mortar.

  2. Add the mashed yolks of hard boiled eggs.

  3. Moisten the mixture with melted butter.

  4. Season the mixture with coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, and French mustard.

  5. Moisten the mixture with beef extract.

Prepare the bread

  1. Cut stale bread into slices.

  2. Remove the crusts from the slices.

  3. Cut the slices into fancy shapes.

  4. Sauté the shaped slices in butter until delicately browned.

  5. Cool the bread.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Spread the lobster mixture over the cooled bread.

  2. Garnish with rings cut from the whites of hard boiled eggs and finely chopped olives.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Forms the main body and flavour of the spread.
Egg yolks
Add richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the mixture.
Melted butter
Adds fat and moisture so the lobster spread stays soft and rich.
Stale bread
Provides a firm, dry base that holds the spread and browns when sautéed.
Beef extract
Adds savoury depth and umami to the lobster mixture.

The step that matters

Sautéing the bread slices. Browning in butter gives flavour and a crisp base, but too much heat can scorch the butter and burn the bread. Cook gently until only delicately browned so the base stays crisp enough to hold the spread.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, meat, egg, butter, pepper, beef, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, egg, butter, pepper, beef, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipes