Name: Olive Sandwiches
Ingredients: 205 olives; olive oil or butter; bread

Why it works: Olive and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,091 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Olive Sandwiches

Ingredients

205 olives
olive oil or butter
bread

Directions

Make the olive spread

Stone and pound the olives.
Mix with olive oil or butter.

Assemble the sandwiches

Butter the bread and spread the olive mixture on top.
Alternatively, fry slices of bread in olive oil.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + breadtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Olives: Supply the main flavour and, when pounded, the thick body of the spread.
Olive oil or butter: Adds fat and moisture so the olive mixture spreads smoothly.
Bread: Forms the base that carries the spread.

“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.