Name: Olive Sandwiches
Ingredients: ½ cup minced olives (stoned); mayonnaise; white 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

½ cup minced olives (stoned)
mayonnaise
white bread

Directions

Prepare

Mince the olives very finely after stoning them.
Mix the minced olives with mayonnaise to taste.

Assemble

Bake white bread in baking tins and cut into thin slices for sandwiches.

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: Provide the main savoury flavour and a briny, slightly salty taste to the filling.
Mayonnaise: Binds the minced olives into a spreadable filling and adds richness and moisture.
White bread: Forms the structure of the sandwich and holds the filling in place.

“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.