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Walnut and Olive Sandwiches

A sandwich made with ground olives and walnuts mixed with mayonnaise, spread between buttered white bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,087 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Walnut and Olive Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Grind the olives and walnuts using a fine attachment on a meat grinder.

  2. Mix the ground olives and walnuts with enough mayonnaise to hold the mixture together.

Assemble

  1. Spread the mixture between slices of buttered white bread.

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 + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. 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

Stuffed olives
Provide the salty, briny flavor that forms the base of the filling.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a rich, nutty texture to the filling.
Mayonnaise
Binds the ground olives and walnuts together into a spreadable mixture.
White bread
Gives a soft structure that holds the filling between its slices.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the bread and helps keep it from soaking up the filling.

The step that matters

Mix in mayonnaise until the filling holds together. Too little mayonnaise leaves the ground olives and walnuts crumbly and hard to spread, while too much makes the filling wet and soggy. Adding it gradually lets you reach a spreadable texture that holds together without soaking the bread.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Lima beansfits about as well
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, bread, butter. 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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