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Olives Stuffed with Anchovies

Olives filled with a mixture of anchovies, onion, parsley, and cayenne, served on fried bread rounds with mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 Stuffed with Anchovies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the stones from the olives and wash them.

  2. Finely chop the anchovies, onion, and parsley in a mortar, then pound the mixture smoothly and season with cayenne pepper.

  3. Fill the olives with the pounded mixture.

Fry the bread

  1. Cut 2‑inch rounds from the bread slices and scoop out a hollow in the center.

  2. Heat lard in a flat stewpan until boiling.

  3. Fry the bread rounds until nicely browned, then drain and cool.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place an olive in the center of each bread round.

  2. Arrange on a dish and drizzle with mayonnaise sauce before serving.

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. Parsley + peppertop 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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. 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

Anchovies
Provide a salty, savoury depth that flavours the olive filling.
Bread
Forms a crisp, browned base that holds the olive when fried.
Spanish olives
Act as the central filled element, adding briny flavour and a firm texture.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying, producing a golden, crisp surface on the bread.

The step that matters

Frying the bread rounds. The bread must be fried until nicely browned and then cooled. Too little heat leaves it greasy and soft, while overcooking makes it bitter and brittle, so the oil must be hot enough for fast, even browning.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, parsley, pepper, bread, sauce):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, parsley, pepper, bread, sauce. 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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