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Dessert

Cheese Olives

Cheese Olives are olives filled with a mixture of cream cheese, salt, cayenne pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cheese Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the pits from the olives.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the cream cheese with salt, cayenne pepper, and chopped parsley.

Assemble

  1. Fill the olives with the prepared cheese mixture.

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.

  1. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Olive + cream cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,003 recipes

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

  5. Cream cheese + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,195 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Queen olives
Provide the salty, briny base that the mild cheese filling contrasts with.
Cream cheese
Adds creamy richness and moisture that fills the olive cavities and mellows the brine.
Cayenne pepper
Adds a sharp, lingering heat that balances the creamy cheese.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Dillfits about as well
  2. Basilfits about as well
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

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

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