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Olive Sandwich

A sandwich made with chopped olives, mayonnaise, egg yolk, cream, paprika, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Olive Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the olives

  1. Chop the olives into small pieces.

  2. Mix the chopped olives with mayonnaise dressing.

Make the egg yolk paste

  1. Rub the hard-boiled egg yolks to a paste with the cream.

Combine and season

  1. Combine the egg yolk mixture with the olive mixture.

  2. Season with paprika and salt if the olives are not very salty.

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. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Olive + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,206 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Olive + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,340 recipes

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

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe split olives
Provide the main bulk, briny flavour and chopped texture of the spread.
Mayonnaise dressing
Binds the chopped olives together and adds fat and creaminess.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Enrich the spread and, when mashed smooth, add a rich, soft texture.
Thick sweet cream
Loosens the mashed yolks into a smooth paste and adds richness.

The step that matters

Rub the egg yolks to a paste with the cream. Mashing the yolks fully with the cream breaks up lumps, so the yolk blends evenly into the olive mixture instead of leaving streaks or crumbly pieces.

“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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