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Olives and Anchovies

Olives stuffed with anchovy butter and wrapped in anchovy fillet, served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Olives and Anchovies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the anchovies and olives

  1. Wash and wipe the anchovies.

  2. Fillet them and reserve half for making anchovy butter.

  3. Stone the olives, keeping them whole.

  4. Stuff them with the anchovy butter and shape nicely.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut the fried bread into neat rounds.

  2. Spread each round with anchovy butter.

  3. Place a stuffed olive in the center of each round and wrap a fillet of anchovy around each olive, skin side out.

  4. Serve cold on a folded napkin.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Butter + olivetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Provide the salty, savory flavor that defines the dish and wrap around each olive.
Butter
Carries the anchovy flavor and gives the stuffing a soft, spreadable texture.
Olives
Serve as the central stuffed element, adding brine and a firm bite.
Fried bread slices
Provide a crisp base that holds the stuffed olive and absorbs the anchovy butter.

The step that matters

Stuff the olives with anchovy butter. The butter must be firm enough to hold its shape inside the olive. If it is too soft it leaks out, and if it is too cold it cracks and sits unevenly, so keep it at a workable temperature while shaping.

“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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