Name: Cheese and Olive Sandwiches
Ingredients: 1 roll Neufchatel cheese; ¼ cup finely chopped stuffed olives; salad dressing; white or graham bread

Why it works: Cheese and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese and Olive Sandwiches

Ingredients

1 roll Neufchatel cheese
¼ cup finely chopped stuffed olives
salad dressing
white or graham bread

Directions

Rub the Neufchatel cheese to a paste.
Add the chopped olives and moisten with salad dressing.
Spread the mixture between slices of white or graham 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.

Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,130 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Cheese + olivetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,802 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Neufchatel cheese: Provides the creamy base that binds the filling into a spreadable paste.
Stuffed olives: Add salty, briny flavor and bits of texture throughout the filling.
Salad dressing: Adds moisture and tang so the cheese mixture spreads easily.

“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.