Skip to main content
Main

Olive Custards

A custard made from cheese and egg, served on butter‑fried bread topped with anchovy paste and olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Olive Custards

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, mix grated cheese and beaten egg over low heat until thickened into a custard.

Prepare the rounds

  1. Fry small rounds of bread in butter until golden.

  2. Spread a thin layer of anchovy paste on each round.

  3. Pour a small amount of custard on top of each round.

  4. Remove the pits from the olives and place one in the center of each round.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Bread + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten egg thickens with the cheese to set the custard.
Grated cheese
Melts into the egg mixture, adding richness and flavor to the custard.
Bread
Forms the golden, crisp base that holds the toppings.
Anchovy paste
Adds a salty, savory flavor layer under the custard.

The step that matters

Thickening the custard over low heat. Egg proteins set when heated, but high heat can scramble the egg and leave lumps. Gentle, low heat and constant stirring give a smooth custard that holds on the bread.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes