Name: Stuffing for Olives
Ingredients: large pitted olives; 1 hard boiled egg yolk; 6 capers, chopped fine; 1 teaspoon onion juice; 2 teaspoons chopped parsley; 1 teaspoon butter; ½ teaspoon anchovy paste

Why it works: Capers and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stuffing for Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Take large pitted olives and fill them with a mixture made from the yolk of one hard boiled egg.
Add 6 chopped capers, 1 teaspoon of onion juice, 2 teaspoons of chopped parsley, 1 teaspoon of butter, and ½ teaspoon of anchovy paste, then mix well to create a delicious relish.

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.

Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,688 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,381 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Capers + anchovytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together473 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard boiled egg yolk: Forms the soft, creamy base of the filling that holds the other flavourings together.
Anchovy paste: Adds a salty, savoury depth that seasons the filling.
Capers: Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the yolk and butter.
Butter: Adds fat that makes the filling smoother and richer in texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, egg, capers, parsley, butter, anchovy):

Shallotfits better
Chivefits better
Lettucefits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, egg, capers, parsley, butter, anchovy. 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.