Black Olive Cream

Black Olive Cream with Orange Zest from Languedoc

The black olive cream from Rue Traversette is a vegetarian tapenade made from 85 percent black olives, refined with capers and the zest of fresh oranges. This is no one-dimensional salty paste, but a tapenade with a fruity twist, just as Stéphane dreams them up in his cannery in the south of France.

Black olive cream from Rue Traversette is a tapenade made from black olives, olive oil, and capers, which Stéphane rounds off with orange zest, a splash of orange juice, and spices. The olive provides depth and saltiness, the orange lifts everything with brightness, and the capers add small, savory accents. A good 8 percent of the jar is orange, and that is exactly what makes the difference compared to ordinary olive tapenade from Provence. In French, it is called Olive noire aux zestes d'oranges.

Dark olive and bright orange

In the black olive cream, the ripe olive carries the scent of the Mediterranean, followed by the bright freshness of orange and the tang of capers. The color is a deep, matte black, interspersed with fine specks of orange.

At first, you taste the dark depth of ripe olives, salty and rounded, then the orange zest opens up the flavor, and the capers add small, savory punctuations. Salty, fruity, and lively, without the bitterness that makes some tapenades heavy. While a paste from the supermarket is often just salty, this one remains bright and round, and the texture is coarse enough that you can still feel the olive.

With lamb, cheese, and on appetizer bread

As a vegetarian spread, the black olive cream joins our vegetable spreads and creams and belongs on every appetizer platter, on crostini, crackers, and toasted bread.

Classically, a tapenade pairs with lamb and goat cheese, but it also works well as a dark element under pasta, on fried fish, or with a veal roast. A dollop in a tomato sauce gives the dish depth. Next to the bright artichoke cream on the board, it forms a dark counterpart—light next to deep black.

When you're in a hurry, stir a spoonful into some olive oil to make a dip for breadsticks and vegetable sticks. Or spread it thinly on sourdough bread with a slice of tomato and a few basil leaves, and your appetizer is ready in minutes.

A classic from Stéphane's cannery

The black olive cream is cooked at Rue Traversette in Saint-André-de-Sangonis, where Stéphane Strobl has been bottling vegetables and herbs since 2005.

The tapenade is an old classic from Provence, usually salty and made with anchovies. Stéphane leaves out the anchovies, makes it vegetarian, and gives it a bright, surprising twist with orange. That is his signature: for over 20 years, the former cork merchant has been taking well-known recipes and evolving them, sometimes with citrus fruits, sometimes with a pepper that hardly anyone else uses.

We visited Stéphane in his village over 15 years ago and were among the first to bring his spreads to Germany. The tiny garage from back then has long since become a cannery built in 2015, where a team of ten works, but the cooking is still done in kettles rather than on an assembly line.

A spoonful on warm baguette is enough

The tapenade unfolds its full aroma at room temperature, so take the jar out of the fridge in good time. After opening, keep it refrigerated and consume within a few days. The tapenade pairs naturally with a bold red wine from the south; a spoonful on a warm baguette is enough. Those who appreciate the full range of this classic should try the other spreads from Rue Traversette, from eggplant to bell pepper.