Skip to main content
Main

Olivette Sandwiches

A sandwich of sautéed chicken livers, shallot, olives, and mayonnaise on buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Olivette Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Clean the chicken livers.

  2. Peel and chop the shallot, then fry it in butter until golden.

  3. Add the sliced livers, season with salt and pepper, and cook over high heat for about five minutes.

  4. Pound the mixture with the olives and rub it through a sieve.

Assemble and serve

  1. Moisten with a little mayonnaise sauce and spread between slices of buttered bread.

  2. Cut into fancy shapes, arrange on small glass dishes, and serve.

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. Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  3. Shallot + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,659 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 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

Chicken livers
Provide the main savoury body of the filling once cooked and pounded smooth.
Butter
Fries the shallot to golden and adds richness and a nutty flavour.
Spanish olives
Add briny, salty flavour that cuts the richness of the liver.
Mayonnaise sauce
Moistens the smooth liver paste so it spreads easily and stays soft.

The step that matters

Cooking the livers over high heat. Livers cook quickly and can turn dry, grainy, or bitter if overcooked. A brief, hot sear browns the surface while keeping the inside tender and pink-free enough to pound smooth.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, liver, butter, olive, pepper, sauce, bread):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, liver, butter, olive, pepper, sauce, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes