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Olives a LA Madras

Olives à la Madras is a savory appetizer of olives, anchovy, and egg yolk mixture served on croutes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Olives a LA Madras

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the pits from the olives.

  2. Combine the butter, anchovy paste, egg yolks, chutney, cayenne, and salt in a mortar. Pound the mixture until smooth.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place a small amount of the mixture on each croute, top with a stoned olive, and fill the remaining mixture using a piping bag.

  2. Decorate with coral and chopped egg white.

  3. Curl an anchovy fillet around the base of each olive.

  4. Serve on small glass dishes 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. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

  4. Olive + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together880 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the filling.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks give the filling its body and a soft, rich texture.
Anchovy sauce or paste
Provides a salty, savoury depth that defines the flavour.
Chutney
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the salty anchovy.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a sieve. Pounding alone leaves lumps and fibres in the filling. Pressing it through a sieve breaks these down, giving the smooth texture needed for piping.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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

“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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