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 6 ounces of 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 saltness.
Make the sauce
Drain the olives again and stew them gently in 1 pint of rich 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, with a briny taste that softens during stewing.
- Rich brown gravy
- Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the olive flavour through the stew.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury gravy and balances its heaviness.
The step that matters
Soaking the blanched olives. Soaking in cold water draws out excess salt from the olives. If the soak is too short, the sauce can taste overly salty, so the time should be adjusted to how salty the olives are.
“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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