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Sauce

Olive Sauce

Olive sauce made by soaking olives, chopping half, adding to brown sauce, and simmering.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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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

Directions

Prepare the olives

  1. Soak the olives in cold water for 30 minutes to remove the salt.

  2. Chop half of the olives finely and leave the rest whole.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the chopped and whole olives to the brown sauce.

  2. Simmer the mixture for 10 minutes.

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 + 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
Add a briny, savoury flavour and a firm bite that contrasts with the smooth sauce.
Brown sauce
Forms the savoury base, giving body and rich flavour to which the olives are added.

The step that matters

Soak the olives to remove the salt. Olives are usually cured in brine, so they are very salty. Soaking draws out some of that salt, so the finished sauce tastes savoury rather than overly salty.

“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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