Name: Cheese and Olive Sandwiches
Ingredients: 8 ounces cream cheese; ⅓ cup finely chopped olives; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 2 tablespoons mayonnaise; saltine crackers

Why it works: Cream cheese and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,003 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells apple, fatty. The science ↓

Cheese and Olive Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

Work the cream cheese until smooth.
Add the chopped olives, salt, and mayonnaise; mix well.

Assemble

Spread the mixture between saltine crackers.
Pack in glass jars for later use if desired.

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.

Cream cheese + olivetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,003 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream cheese: Provides the rich, smooth base that holds the filling together.
Chopped olives: Add briny, salty flavor and small bits of texture to the spread.
Mayonnaise: Adds fat and moisture, keeping the spread soft and easy to spread.

“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.