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Olive-and-Anchovy Canapes

Canapés of toasted bread topped with olives, anchovies, butter, and watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Olive-and-Anchovy Canapes

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stone and peel the olives, keeping their shape.

  2. Wash the anchovies and coil one around each olive.

Assemble and serve

  1. Toast the rounds of bread on both sides and butter them while hot.

  2. Place an olive on each piece of toast.

  3. Arrange the toast on a hot dish lined with paper and garnish with watercress.

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Olive + watercresstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together684 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Olive + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,887 recipes

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

  5. Bread + watercresstop 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

Olives
Provide the main savoury, briny flavour and the centre of each canapé.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth that pairs with the olives.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that softens the toast and carries flavour.
Bread
Forms the crisp base that holds the olive and anchovy topping.

The step that matters

Toast the bread on both sides. Toasting both sides dries and firms the bread so it stays crisp under the olive and anchovy and does not turn soggy. Buttering while hot lets the butter soak in slightly and seal the surface.

“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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