Name: Olive Sauce
Ingredients: 12 stoned olives; brown sauce

Why it works: Olive and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,568 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Olive Sauce

Ingredients

12 stoned olives
brown sauce

Directions

Cook the stoned olives in simmering water for 10 minutes.
Chop the olives finely and add them to the brown sauce.

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 + saucetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,568 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

Olives: Provide the main savoury flavour and a firm, chopped texture in the sauce.
Brown sauce: Forms the base of the sauce and carries the olive pieces through the dish.

“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.