Name: Olive Sandwiches
Ingredients: 1 cup chopped olives; ½ cup cream or oil mayonnaise; 8 slices of buttered bread

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

1 cup chopped olives
½ cup cream or oil mayonnaise
8 slices of buttered bread

Directions

Chop the olives finely.
Mix the chopped olives with the cream or oil mayonnaise.
Spread the mixture between thin slices of buttered bread.

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).
Cream + breadtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,789 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Olive + creamtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,206 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Olives: Provide the main flavour and salty, briny character of the filling.
Mayonnaise: Binds the chopped olives into a spreadable filling and adds moisture and richness.

“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.