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Canapes Aux Olives E'arcies

A chilled tuna fish spread on croutons, set with aspic jelly, topped with pimiento and gherkin strips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Canapes Aux Olives E'arcies

Oven, in the book's wordsA sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tuna base

  1. Pound the preserved tunny fish until smooth.

  2. Mix in the clotted cream, salt, paprika, and cayenne, then rub through a fine sieve.

  3. Combine the fish mixture with the aspic jelly and spread it on a clean baking sheet.

  4. Let it set in the ice.

Assemble the canapés

  1. Prepare the fried bread croutons and let them cool.

  2. Spread one side of each crouton with anchovy butter.

  3. Cut the tunny-fish mixture into shapes matching the croutons and place one on each.

  4. Arrange thin strips of pimiento and gherkins in a lattice pattern on top.

Serve

  1. Serve cold, decorated with chopped aspic or whipped cream, and garnish with chervil or tarragon.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Preserved tunny fish
Provides the main savoury flavour and the body of the spread.
Clotted cream
Adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture to the fish mixture.
Aspic jelly
Binds the fish mixture so it sets firm enough to cut into shapes.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture set in the ice. The aspic is gelatine-based and must set fully and cold before cutting; if it is not chilled enough, the shapes will be soft, smear, and not hold their outline on the croutons.

“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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