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Olives a LA Madrid

Olives stuffed with a sardine, butter, and egg yolk mixture, served with anchovy biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Olives a LA Madrid

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Pound together the sardines, butter, and egg yolks.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Add lemon juice, pepper, and essence of anchovy.

Assemble

  1. Fill the olives with this mixture.

  2. Spread some of the mixture on each biscuit and place an olive in the center.

  3. Garnish with any remaining mixture.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

  4. Biscuit + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Olive + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together153 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines
Provide the savoury, salty fish base that flavours the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the filling a smooth, spreadable texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and body, helping the pounded mixture hold together and become smooth.
Turned olives
Serve as the central garnish and hold the filling.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a sieve. Pounding alone leaves lumps of fish and yolk. Pressing the mixture through a sieve breaks up fibres and produces a fine, smooth texture that fills the olives neatly and spreads easily on the biscuits.

“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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