Name: Alexandra Canapes
Ingredients: small rounds of toasted bread; anchovies; hard-boiled eggs; olives; capers

Why it works: Olive and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,688 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Alexandra Canapes

Ingredients

Directions

Butter the small rounds of toasted bread.
Cover each piece with anchovies.
Finely chop the hard-boiled eggs, olives, and capers together.
Scatter the chopped mixture over the anchovies.

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 + caperstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,688 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Bread + olivetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Bread + caperstop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together307 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Egg + caperstop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,311 recipes

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