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Lobster Canapees

Lobster canapees are toasted bread rounds topped with lobster butter, lobster meat, capers, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 Canapees

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut bread into 2-inch rounds.

  2. Fry the rounds in clarified butter until golden.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread each round with lobster butter.

  2. Place a piece of lobster meat in the center of each round.

  3. Garnish with capers around the lobster.

  4. Sprinkle with salt and cayenne pepper 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Capers + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

  5. Bread + caperstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the crisp base that holds the lobster topping.
Clarified butter
Fries the rounds to a golden, crisp surface with rich flavor.
Lobster butter
Adds moisture and rich seafood flavor to the bread base.
Lobster meat
Serves as the main topping, providing the dish's central flavor and texture.

The step that matters

Frying the rounds in clarified butter until golden. Clarified butter has no milk solids, so it can heat to high temperatures without burning. Frying until golden browns the bread through the Maillard reaction, giving flavor and a crisp base that resists sogging under the moist lobster butter and meat.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Capersthe original

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