Name: Ouve and Cheese Sandwiches
Ingredients: cream cheese; olives; thin slices of rye bread

Why it works: Olive and rye share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Ouve and Cheese Sandwiches

Ingredients

cream cheese
olives
thin slices of rye bread

Directions

Chop olives into very small pieces.
Beat cream cheese with a fork until very soft.
Spread cream cheese on thin slices of rye bread.
Spread chopped olives on top of the cream cheese.

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.

Olive + ryetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together98 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Rye + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together59 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Cream cheese + olivetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,003 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).
Cream cheese + breadtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together166 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).