Why it works: Olive and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓
Olive Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the olives
Remove the stones from the olives by paring the fruit close to them in a corkscrew shape.
Weigh the prepared olives and blanch them in boiling water for 5 minutes.
Drain the olives and place them in cold water for 30 minutes to 1 hour, depending on their saltiness.
Make the sauce
Drain the olives again and stew them gently in the brown gravy for 15 to 25 minutes.
Add the juice of ½ lemon and serve the sauce hot.
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.
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Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,922 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
- Olives
- Provide the main flavour and texture of the sauce, softened by blanching and stewing.
- Rich brown gravy or espagnole
- Forms the sauce body and carries the olive flavour through gentle stewing.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury gravy.
The step that matters
Soaking the olives in cold water. Olives vary in saltiness, and the soaking time removes salt from the fruit. Soaking too briefly leaves the sauce overly salty, while soaking too long can dull the olive flavour. Tasting an olive during soaking helps judge when to stop.
“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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