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Devilled Olives

A dish of olives stuffed with anchovy paste, arranged on biscuits, baked and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Devilled Olives

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Remove the pits from the olives and stuff them with anchovy paste.

  2. Spread anchovy paste on the biscuits and brush with oiled butter.

  3. Arrange three or four olives in circular rows on each biscuit.

  4. Season with pepper and plenty of cayenne.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the biscuits on a buttered sauté pan and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for ten minutes.

  2. Serve hot on a folded napkin, garnished with parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

  3. Biscuit + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Biscuit + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Large spanish olives
Provide the main savoury filling base, with their briny flavour carried by the stuffing.
Anchovy paste
Adds a salty, savoury depth that complements the olives and biscuits.
Small whole-meal or charcoal biscuits
Form the crisp base that holds the toppings and bakes to a firm, golden texture.
Oiled butter
Adds fat that helps the biscuit brown and carries flavour into the base.

The step that matters

Bake the biscuits until just hot. The biscuits need enough heat to crisp and warm the toppings, but overbaking can dry the biscuit and toughen the olives, so timing matters.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, anchovy, biscuit, butter, pepper):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, anchovy, biscuit, butter, pepper. 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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