Name: Olive Sandwiches
Ingredients: Stuffed olives; sandwich bread; mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Olive and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,091 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Olive Sandwiches

Ingredients

Stuffed olives
sandwich bread
mayonnaise dressing

Directions

Prepare

Chop the stuffed olives finely.
Cut the sandwich bread into very thin slices.

Assemble and cut

Spread each slice with mayonnaise dressing.
Add a layer of chopped olives on the bottom slice and cover with another slice.
Trim the edges and cut into desired shapes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + breadtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Stuffed olives: Provide the main savory filling and salty flavor in each sandwich.
Sandwich bread: Forms the thin structural base that holds the filling together.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds moisture and richness, helping the bread hold the olive filling.

“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.