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Dessert

Crusts

These croutons are toasted bread topped with olives, tartar sauce, anchovy fillets, hard‑boiled egg, lobster coral, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and lobster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Crusts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the croutons

  1. Stamp out 18 round slices of white bread.

  2. Fry the bread slices in clarified butter until golden.

  3. Drain the fried bread slices on a cloth.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pit the olives and fill the olives with stiff Tartar sauce.

  2. Place a little Tartar sauce in the center of each crouton.

  3. Top each crouton with an olive.

  4. Curl an anchovy fillet around each olive.

  5. Garnish the sides with finely chopped hard-boiled egg, lobster coral, and parsley.

  6. Keep in a cool place until ready to 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. Sauce + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

White bread
Forms the crisp base that holds the sauce and garnish.
Clarified butter
Fries the bread, adding fat for golden browning and rich flavor.
Tartar sauce
Adds moisture and tangy richness at the center of each crouton.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds a soft, mild texture and color as a garnish.

The step that matters

Frying the bread until golden. Frying too briefly leaves the bread soft and greasy, while over-browning makes it bitter. Draining well on a cloth removes surface oil so the croutons stay crisp under the sauce.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, olive, sauce, egg, lobster):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, olive, sauce, egg, lobster. 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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