Name: Olive and Caper Sandwiches
Ingredients: ½ cup finely chopped olives; ⅙ cup finely chopped capers; 2 tablespoons soft butter; ¼ teaspoon celery salt; a pinch of cayenne pepper; a few drops of lemon juice; 1 teaspoon grated lemon peel; thin squares of buttered graham bread

Why it works: Olive and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,688 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Olive and Caper Sandwiches

Ingredients

½ cup finely chopped olives
⅙ cup finely chopped capers
2 tablespoons soft butter
¼ teaspoon celery salt
a pinch of cayenne pepper
a few drops of lemon juice
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
thin squares of buttered graham bread

Directions

Prepare the filling

Chop the olives very fine.
Add the chopped capers, mixing thoroughly with the soft butter.
Season with celery salt, cayenne, lemon juice, and grated lemon peel.

Assemble

Spread the mixture on thin squares of buttered graham bread.

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.

Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,688 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,467 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,222 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Olives: Provide the main briny flavour and chopped texture of the filling.
Capers: Add a sharp, salty tang that cuts through the rich butter.
Soft butter: Binds the chopped olives and capers into a spreadable mixture.
Graham bread: Serves as the base that carries the spread.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, capers, butter, pepper, lemon, bread):

Parsleyfits better
Thymefits better
Tarragonfits better
Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, capers, butter, pepper, lemon, bread. 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.