Skip to main content
Starter

Palmettes De Caviar

A chilled appetizer of caviar spread on toasted bread, garnished with butter, lobster coral, parsley, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Palmettes De Caviar

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toppings

  1. Mix caviar, lemon juice, and shallots in a bowl using a wooden fork.

  2. Cream fresh butter and mix with a little lobster coral.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut bread into heart shapes.

  2. Spread caviar mixture on one side of each bread piece.

  3. Use a piping bag to decorate the edges of the bread with the butter.

  4. Arrange on a folded napkin or dish paper, garnishing with parsley and lemon quarters.

  5. Serve cold.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Caviar + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together107 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Caviar
Provides the salty, briny flavour that is the centrepiece of the toast.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the caviar and balances its saltiness.
Shallots
Add a mild, sharp onion flavour to the caviar mixture.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and fat, and carries the lobster coral for piping.
Lobster coral
Adds colour and a subtle shellfish aroma to the butter.
Brown bread
Serves as the crisp or toasted base that holds the topping.

“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

Deviled OystersDeviled Oysters25 recipes