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Olive-sauce

Olive sauce made by blanching olives, stewing them in brown gravy, and adding lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Olive-sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the olives

  1. Remove the stones from the olives by paring the fruit close to them in a corkscrew shape.

  2. Weigh 6 ounces of prepared olives and blanch them in boiling water for 5 minutes.

  3. Drain the olives and place them in cold water for 30 minutes to 1 hour, depending on their saltiness.

Make the sauce

  1. Drain the olives again and stew them gently in 1 pint of rich brown gravy for 15 to 25 minutes.

  2. Add the juice of 1/2 lemon and serve the sauce hot.

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 + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Olive + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 texture of the sauce, softened by blanching and stewing.
Rich brown gravy
Forms the savoury liquid base that the olives stew in, giving body to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and balances the olives' flavour.

The step that matters

Soaking the blanched olives in cold water. Olives cured in brine vary in saltiness, so soaking time must match them. Too short leaves the sauce overly salty, while over-soaking can wash out flavour and leave the fruit flat.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, sauce. 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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