Name: Holiday Sandwiches
Ingredients: 1 gherkin, finely chopped; 6 stoned olives, finely chopped; 3 tablespoons mayonnaise; 8 slices of bread; butter for spreading; cream cheese; paprika; parsley for garnish

Why it works: Olive and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,649 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Holiday Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

Chop the gherkin and olives.
Mix the chopped gherkin and olives with mayonnaise.

Assemble and serve

Butter the bread slices.
Spread half of the slices with the gherkin mixture and the other half with cream cheese.
Sprinkle paprika on each slice and press them together.
Cut into fancy shapes and garnish with parsley.

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 + parsleytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,649 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + cream cheesetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,747 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Olive + cream cheesetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,003 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise: Binds the chopped gherkin and olives into a moist, spreadable filling.
Cream cheese: Adds a soft, creamy layer that moistens the bread and balances the sharp pickle.
Gherkin: Provides sharp acidity and crunch that contrast with the rich spreads.
Olives: Add salty, savoury flavour to the filling.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, bread, butter, cream cheese):

Capersfits better
Garlicfits about as well
Parsleythe original
Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, bread, butter, cream cheese. 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.