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Canapes a LA Selon

A canapé of buttered water biscuits topped with lemon‑dipped hard‑boiled egg, parsley, caviar, and prawns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Canapes a LA Selon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lightly butter the water biscuits.

Assemble

  1. Cover them with slices of hard-boiled egg dipped in lemon juice and coated with chopped parsley.

  2. Place a teaspoonful of caviar in the center.

  3. Garnish with prawns.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Biscuit + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + lemontop 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

Butter
Adds a thin fatty layer that carries flavour and keeps the biscuit from tasting dry.
Hard-boiled eggs
Provide a soft, mild, creamy topping that cushions the richer caviar.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the eggs and balances the richness of the caviar.
Caviare
Supplies the salty, briny centrepiece flavour and a delicate popping 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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