Why it works: Celery and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓
Olive Sandwich
Ingredients
Directions
Chop the olives, celery, and walnuts.
Mix the chopped ingredients with mayonnaise dressing.
Spread butter on two slices of bread.
Place the olive mixture between the slices of bread.
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.
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Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together852 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Olive + walnuttop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,087 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,091 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Olive + celerytop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,667 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the celery
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, walnut, bread, butter):
- Capersfits better
- Parsleyfits better
- Sagefits better
- Celerythe original
Fit is the average pairing score against olive, walnut, bread, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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