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Olive and Celery Sandwiches

A sandwich made with chopped olives, celery, mayonnaise, and buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and bread 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 ↓

Olive and Celery Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the olives and celery separately in a chopping bowl.

  2. Mix the chopped olives and celery together.

  3. Moisten the mixture with enough mayonnaise dressing to spread easily.

Assemble and cut

  1. Spread the mixture between slices of buttered bread.

  2. Cut the sandwiches into rounds or triangles.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Olive + celerytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Celery + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,110 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Olives stuffed with pimentos
Provide the salty, briny flavour that is the main taste of the filling.
Tender white celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch to the soft filling.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds moisture and fat so the chopped filling binds and spreads easily.
Buttered bread
Forms the structure and adds richness, with butter moistening the bread against the filling.

The step that matters

Moisten the mixture with enough mayonnaise dressing to spread easily.. Too little dressing leaves chopped vegetables dry and hard to spread, while too much makes the bread soggy. Add it gradually until the filling just holds together.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, bread):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, 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.

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