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Devilled Olives

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Devilled Olives

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

  1. Stone the olives and stuff them with anchovy paste.

  2. Spread the biscuits with anchovy paste and brush with oiled butter.

  3. Arrange the olives in circular rows on the biscuits.

  4. Season with pepper and cayenne.

  5. Place on a buttered sauté pan in the oven at 400°F (200°C) for 10 minutes.

  6. Serve hot on a folded napkin, garnished with parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Biscuit + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Biscuit + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, anchovy, biscuit, butter, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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