Name: Minced Ham and Olive
Ingredients: 1 lb minced ham; 20 chopped olives; 2 oz melted butter; 4 tablespoons hot water; 1 dash of pepper; 2 slices of bread

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 ↓

Minced Ham and Olive

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

Chop the olives and mix them with the minced ham.
Add the melted butter, hot water, and pepper to the mixture.

Assemble and wrap

Trim the hard crust from the bread slices and spread them with the butter, ham, and olive mixture.
Cut the sandwiches diagonally and wrap them in wax paper.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,263 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Olive + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,887 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Minced ham: Forms the main savoury filling and gives the sandwich its bulk.
Olives: Add briny, salty flavour and texture to the filling.
Melted butter: Adds fat and richness, moistening the filling and helping it spread.
Bread: Provides the structure that holds the filling together.

“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.