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Appetisers with Anchovies and Olives

Small fried bread rounds filled with anchovy balls and olives, topped with mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,091 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Appetisers with Anchovies and Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Cut small round pieces of stale bread, about the size of small coins.

  2. Fry the bread in lard until golden brown, then let it cool.

Prepare the olives and anchovies

  1. Stone the olives and fillet the anchovies, washing them carefully.

  2. Roll the filleted anchovies into small balls and fill the stoned olives with them.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place a small drop of mayonnaise sauce in the center of each fried bread round.

  2. Stand the filled olive upright on the mayonnaise, securing it with another small drop of mayonnaise on top.

  3. Serve these appetisers as a single bite, enjoying the combination of flavors.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Olive + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Bread + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Provides a crisp, sturdy base that holds the topping in each bite.
Lard
Fries the bread, giving it a golden, crisp surface through browning.
Olives
Contribute a salty, briny flavour and a firm texture as the filling.
Anchovies
Add a savoury, salty depth of flavour that complements the olives.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds fat and moisture, and acts as a binder that holds the olive upright on the bread.

The step that matters

Frying the bread until golden brown. Frying causes browning through the Maillard reaction and dries the surface, which gives crispness. Undercooked bread stays soft and soaks up the mayonnaise, so the bite loses its structure.

“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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