Name: Olives, with Foie Gras
Ingredients: croutons; pâté de foie gras; blanched olives (pitted); 1 ounce butter; 2 teaspoons parsley (chopped); 4 drops lemon juice

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Olives, with Foie Gras

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

Spread pâté de foie gras over the croutons.
Place a blanched olive on each crouton, filling the cavity with more pâté de foie gras.

Decorate

Make maitre d'hotel butter by beating together butter, parsley, and lemon juice.
Decorate the edges of the croutons and the tops of the olives with the maitre d'hotel butter.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,649 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,922 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

Pâté de foie gras: Provides rich fat and a smooth, savoury base that carries the flavour of the dish.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the maitre d'hotel butter used for decoration.
Blanched olives: Supply a salty, briny contrast to the rich pâté.

“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.