Skip to main content
Main

Caviar a LA Diable.

Deviled caviar mixed with lemon, almonds, and cayenne, served on toasted bread rounds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Caviar a LA Diable.

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

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 croutes

  1. Cut the bread into slices about ½ inch thick and stamp out rounds ¾ inch in diameter.

  2. Scoop out the center and fry the rounds in clarified butter until golden.

Make the caviare filling

  1. Shred the almonds and bake them on a baking sheet until fawny in color.

  2. Mix the caviare with the lemon juice using a wooden spoon.

  3. Add the shredded almonds and a pinch of cayenne.

  4. Mix the butter with a little red pepper for color.

  5. Spread the mixture on a plate and chill it.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill the croutes with the prepared caviare.

  2. Stamp out little stars and place one on each croute.

  3. When ready to serve, heat the croutes in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 6 minutes.

  4. Garnish with lemon slices and parsley, then serve.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Caviare
Provides the main flavour and the salty, briny character of the filling.
Sweet almonds
Add crunch and a toasted nutty flavour to the filling once baked.
Lemon
Its juice adds acidity that brightens the rich caviare.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and gives the fried croutes a golden browning.
Bread
Forms the crisp base that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Heating the croutes in the oven. Heating only for the stated time keeps the bread crisp and the filling cool-tasting. Overheating dries the bread and can make the caviare lose its fresh, delicate flavour.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Chickpeafits about as well
  2. Lima beansfits about as well
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, bread, pepper, butter. 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 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesAlmond SoupAlmond Soup60 recipes