Name: Olive-stuffed Beef Meatballs with Tomato and Olive Sauce Recipe
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 30 min
Yield: 4 people
Ingredients: 100 pitted queen green olives; g slices white bread; 3 milk; 100 minced beef; ml onion, finely chopped; 500 garlic clove, finely chopped; g freshly chopped flat-leaf parsley; 0.25 egg, beaten; 1 sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to season; 1 pitted black olives; tbsp olive oil; 1 onion, finely chopped; 1 garlic cloves, finely chopped; pinch small carrot, peeled and finely chopped; 50 freshly chopped thyme; g freshly chopped rosemary; 5 sugar; tbsp glass white wine; 0.75 chopped plum tomatoes; 4 sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to season

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

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.

Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,665 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,308 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,649 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,768 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, bread, milk, beef, onion, garlic, parsley):

Thymefits better
Cuminfits better
Capersfits better
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, bread, milk, beef, onion, garlic, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Beef	100g cooked	250
Milk	1 cup (244ml) whole	149
Olive Oil	1 tbsp (14g)	119
White Bread	1 slice (30g) white	79
Egg	1 large egg (50g)	78
Sugar	1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated	49
Onion	1 medium (110g)	44
Plum	1 medium (66g)	30
Carrot	1 medium (61g)	25
Wine	2 tbsp cooking wine (30ml)	25
Tomato	1 medium (123g)	22
Clove	1 tsp ground (2g)	7
Black Pepper	1 tsp ground (2.3g)	6
Olive	1 large (4g)	4
Garlic	1 clove (3g)	4
Thyme	1 tsp dried (1.4g)	4
Rosemary	1 tsp dried (1.2g)	4
Parsley	1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)	1
Salt	1 tsp (6g)	0

Olive-stuffed Beef Meatballs with Tomato and Olive Sauce Recipe