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Olive Savoury

A buttered toast topped with anchovy paste and chopped olives, then toasted and served with parsley or cress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,649 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Olive Savoury

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut thin, neat rounds of buttered toast.

  2. Spread anchovy paste on each piece of toast.

  3. Sprinkle chopped olives thickly on top.

  4. Press two pieces of toast together and butter the top slightly.

Heat and serve

  1. Place in a gas oven for a moment until hot.

  2. Serve immediately, garnished with parsley or cress.

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 + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 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 + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Anchovy + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,702 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovy paste
Adds a salty, savoury umami flavour that stands out against the olives.
Olives
Contribute briny, savoury flavour and a bit of moisture to the topping.
Buttered toast
Forms the crisp base that holds the topping and gives the bite its structure.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, anchovy, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, anchovy, butter. 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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