Skip to main content
Main

Tartines a LA Lucullus

Open sandwich made with pastry, anchovy paste, hard‑boiled egg yolks, and garnished with olives and anchovy fillets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parmesan cheese and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 4,076 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

The recipe

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pastry

  1. Prepare the pastry as usual.

  2. Sprinkle grated cheese over the last three rolls.

  3. Roll the pastry into a long strip.

  4. Cut the strip in half (1 inch thick).

  5. Spread one half with anchovy paste.

  6. Place the other half on top.

  7. Cut into 2 to 3-inch squares.

  8. Brush the tops with beaten egg yolk.

  9. Place the squares on a baking sheet.

  10. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

  11. Let the squares cool.

Make the filling

  1. Shell the hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Place the yolks in a mortar.

  3. Add butter, chopped gherkins, anchovy paste, white sauce, and cayenne to the mortar.

  4. Pound the mixture well.

  5. Sieve the mixture.

Decorate and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a piping bag with a fancy tip.

  2. Decorate each pastry piece with the mixture.

  3. Place a stoned olive in the center of each pastry piece.

  4. Arrange fillets of anchovies around each olive.

  5. Serve on a fancy dish or folded napkin.

  6. Garnish with parsley or 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parmesan cheese + olivetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Olive + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Egg + parmesan cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,059 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Egg + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together18,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanol (resin, flower).

  5. Parmesan cheese + saucetop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together1,293 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mash into a smooth, rich base that gives the filling its body.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury, salty flavour and browns on the pastry as it bakes.
Anchovies
Provide a salty, savoury depth that carries the whole filling.
White sauce
Binds the pounded filling so it holds together and pipes smoothly.

The step that matters

Sieving the filling. Pounded yolks and other solids stay grainy unless pushed through a sieve. A smooth mixture pipes evenly and gives the fine texture the dish depends on.

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, parmesan cheese, sauce, olive):

  1. Capersbetter flavor fit
  2. Basilabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Garlicabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, parmesan cheese, sauce, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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

Illustration of Macaroni and CheeseIllustrationMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesIllustration of Cheese MakingIllustrationCheese Making50 recipesIllustration of Cheese FrittersIllustrationCheese Fritters34 recipesIllustration of Cheese OmeletteIllustrationCheese Omelette31 recipes