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A Relish

A relish of cream cheese mixed with olives, nuts, butter, and hard‑boiled egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream cheese and butter match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,746 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soften the cream cheese, adding a little cream if necessary.

  2. Chop the olives, nuts, and egg finely.

Combine

  1. Mix the chopped ingredients into the cream cheese.

  2. Add the creamed butter and combine well.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Cream cheese + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Cream cheese + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together910 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

  3. Olive + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + eggtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together118,511 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Cream cheese + nutstop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together56 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream cheese
Forms the creamy base that holds the other chopped ingredients together.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture when creamed in.
Hard boiled egg
Adds body and a soft, firm texture through the spread.
Nuts
Contribute crunch and a toasty, savoury flavour against the soft base.
Stuffed olives
Add salty, briny flavour and bits of contrast throughout the spread.

Flavor stand-ins for the nuts

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

  1. Pecansbetter flavor fit
  2. Walnutbetter flavor fit
  3. Peasbetter flavor fit
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream cheese, olive, butter, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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