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Oyster Canapes

Sardine canapés are fried bread rounds topped with a seasoned sardine mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Oyster Canapes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sardine mixture

  1. Bone, skin, and trim the sardines, then mince them finely.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the sardines, butter, flour, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, essence of anchovies, eggs, cayenne, and salt.

  3. Heat the mixture on the stove until thickened, but do not let it boil.

Fry and serve

  1. Cut rounds of stale bread using a 2-inch cutter.

  2. Fry the bread rounds in boiling fat until golden.

  3. Top the fried bread with the sardine mixture and serve hot.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and thicken it as they gently set with heat.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, savoury mouthfeel to the filling.
Flour
Helps thicken the mixture so it holds together on the bread.
Sardines
Provide the main savoury fish flavour and body of the filling.

The step that matters

Heating the mixture without boiling. Eggs thicken gently as they warm, but if the mixture boils they can curdle and turn grainy, ruining the smooth spread.

“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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