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Olives a LA Madras

Olives à la Madras are olives topped with anchovy, egg, and butter mixture, served on fried croutes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,263 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Olives a LA Madras

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Stone the olives.

  2. In a mortar, pound the butter, anchovy paste, egg yolks, chutney, and seasoning.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place a little of the mixture on each croute.

  2. Top each croute with a stoned olive and fill with the remaining mixture using a piping bag.

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

  4. Decorate with coral and chopped egg white.

  5. 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. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Olive + buttertop 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

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, spreadable body to the filling.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks give the filling a creamy, binding texture once pounded and sieved.
Anchovy sauce or paste
Adds salty, savoury depth that flavours the filling.
Chutney
Contributes sweetness and acidity to balance the salty anchovy.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a sieve. Pressing the filling through a sieve breaks up lumps and yolk fragments, giving a smooth, even texture that pipes cleanly and spreads evenly on the croutes.

“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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