Name: Egg and Olive Sandwich
Ingredients: 5 hard-boiled eggs, chopped fine; 15 large green olives, chopped fine; 3 tablespoons soft butter; pepper, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; thin slices of buttered bread

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Egg and Olive Sandwich

Ingredients

5 hard-boiled eggs, chopped fine
15 large green olives, chopped fine
3 tablespoons soft butter
pepper, to taste
coarse sea salt, to taste
thin slices of buttered bread

Directions

Prepare the filling

Chop the hard-boiled eggs and green olives finely.
In a bowl, moisten the chopped mixture with soft butter.
Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

Assemble and serve

Spread the mixture on thin slices of buttered bread.
Serve with an olive on the side.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,263 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).
Olive + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,887 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs: Provide the bulk and soft, creamy texture of the filling.
Green olives: Add salty, briny flavour that contrasts with the rich eggs.
Soft butter: Adds fat and moisture so the chopped mixture binds and spreads easily.

“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.