Why it works: Olive and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,091 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓
Olive Sandwiches
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the olives
Pour boiling water over the olives and let them stand for 5 minutes.
Drain the olives and place them in ice water until cold and crisp.
Dry the olives, remove the pits, and chop them very finely.
Assemble the sandwiches
In a bowl, mix the chopped olives with cracker dust and mayonnaise dressing.
Spread the mixture on thinly sliced bread without butter.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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 + breadtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Olives
- Provide the main flavour and the chopped texture of the filling.
- Cracker dust
- Absorbs moisture and thickens the filling so it holds together on bread.
- Mayonnaise dressing
- Binds the chopped olives and adds richness and moisture to the spread.
The step that matters
Dry the olives before chopping. Wet olives add excess moisture to the filling, which can make it runny and soak into the thin bread. Drying them well keeps the spread thick and firm.
“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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