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Pimento Canape

A canape of pimento slices topped with cottage cheese, French dressing, beef tongue, horseradish, and olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,220 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Pimento Canape

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mash cottage cheese with French dressing until smooth.

  2. Spread the mixture on round slices of pimentos.

  3. Top with chopped beef tongue.

  4. Garnish with horseradish and chopped olives.

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. Beef + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,220 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Horseradish + olivetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together475 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beef + horseradishtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together491 recipes

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

  4. Cottage cheese + olivetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together205 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

  5. Cottage cheese + beeftop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together95 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Cottage cheese
Forms the creamy base that holds the spread together and adds moisture.
French dressing
Adds tang and acidity that brightens the creamy cheese base.
Round slices of pimentos
Provide a mild, sweet base layer that carries the spread.
Chopped beef tongue
Adds a savory, meaty topping that gives the canapé its main flavor.

The step that matters

Mash the cottage cheese until smooth. Lumps in the cheese make the spread uneven and hard to apply evenly. Thorough mashing with the dressing gives a smooth, cohesive layer that holds its shape on the pimento slices.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cottage cheese, beef, olive):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Onionfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cottage cheese, beef, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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