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Canapes

Canapés are small bread pieces topped with anchovy, olive, yolk, pepper, and garnished with olive or water‑cress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Canapes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Cut thin slices of stale bread and butter them.

  2. Cut out oblong pieces, 2 inches long and 1.5 inches wide.

Assemble and garnish

  1. On one piece, place strips of anchovy and thin slices of olive.

  2. Smooth over with pounded hard-boiled yolk and dust with yellow pepper.

  3. Cover with another piece of bread and garnish with an olive or water-cress.

  4. Optionally, sprinkle with grated ham, hard-boiled yolk, or cod's roe.

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. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  3. Bread + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Provides a firm base that holds the filling without going soggy quickly.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and a barrier that slows moisture soaking into the bread.
Fillet of anchovy
Contributes a salty, savoury flavour that is the main taste of the canapé.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Forms a smooth, creamy spread that adds richness and texture.

“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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