Name: Nut and Egg Sandwiches
Ingredients: 1½ cups pecan meats, ground fine; 1½ cups walnut meats, ground fine; 2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped; 8 medium-sized olives, chopped fine; Dressing (as for salmon salad); Bread, buttered

Why it works: Walnut and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,087 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Nut and Egg Sandwiches

Ingredients

1½ cups pecan meats, ground fine
1½ cups walnut meats, ground fine
2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
8 medium-sized olives, chopped fine
Dressing (as for salmon salad)
Bread, buttered

Directions

In a bowl, mix the ground pecans, ground walnuts, chopped hard-boiled eggs, and chopped olives.
Moisten the mixture with dressing made for salmon salad.
Spread the mixture between slices of buttered 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.

Walnut + olivetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,087 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Meat + walnuttop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,035 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Pecans: Provide the bulk and rich, oily body of the filling.
Walnuts: Add more nut bulk and a slightly bitter, earthy depth to the filling.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add soft, binding body that holds the chopped filling together.
Olives: Contribute briny, savoury flavour and a little moisture to the filling.
Dressing: Moistens the nut and egg mixture so it spreads easily and tastes cohesive.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, egg, olive, salmon, bread):

Peasfits better
Pecansfits about as well
Sesamefits about as well
Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, egg, olive, salmon, 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.

Cornbread345 recipes

Bread Pudding336 recipes

Nut Bread109 recipes

Wheat Bread65 recipes

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Nut and Egg Sandwiches