Skip to main content
Snack

Canape Des Olives Earci

A French roll crouton topped with olives, anchovy, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Watercress and capers share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 60 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Canape Des Olives Earci

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the French roll into round slices.

  2. Fry the slices in a frying basket until golden brown.

Assemble

  1. Prepare enough watercress butter to create a wall around each crouton.

  2. In the center of each crouton, place two stoned olives filled with a mixture of pounded anchovy and capers.

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. Watercress + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Anchovy + caperstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Watercress + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together684 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Olive + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together880 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

French roll
Forms the crisp, golden base that holds the toppings.
Watercress butter
Adds fat and flavour, and forms a barrier around the topping.
Olives
Provide the main salty, savoury centrepiece of each canapé.
Pounded anchovy
Adds a concentrated salty, savoury flavour to the olive filling.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that balances the olives and anchovy.

The step that matters

Frying the slices until golden brown. Frying in fat browns the bread through the Maillard reaction, creating a crisp surface that holds toppings without going soggy. Pulling them too early leaves them soft and pale, while overcooking makes them bitter.

“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

FrittersFritters56 recipesCrisp CrackersCrisp Crackers7 recipes