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Olives and Pimento Sandwiches

A sandwich with olives, pimento, salad dressing, and optional nut meats on buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Olives and Pimento Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine chopped olives, nut meats (if using), salad dressing, and minced pimento.

  2. Spread the mixture evenly on buttered bread.

  3. Top with a leaf of lettuce and close the sandwich.

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. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  4. Bread + lettucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Olive + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Olives
Provide the main savoury flavour and salty bite that define the filling.
Salad dressing
Binds the chopped ingredients together and adds moisture and tang to the filling.
Minced pimento
Adds sweet, mild pepper flavour and a touch of colour to the filling.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, meat, bread):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, meat, bread. 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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