Name: Cheese and Olive Sandwiches
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons Imperial cheese or cream cheese; 12 pimento olives, chopped fine; mayonnaise; thin slices of bread

Why it works: Cheese and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese and Olive Sandwiches

Ingredients

2 tablespoons Imperial cheese or cream cheese
12 pimento olives, chopped fine
mayonnaise
thin slices of bread

Directions

Make the filling

In a bowl, mix the cheese and chopped olives until smooth.
Add mayonnaise to the mixture and combine well.

Assemble and serve

Spread the mixture between slices of bread.
Cut off the crusts and trim the sandwiches into attractive shapes.
Wrap the sandwiches in a damp napkin and keep in a cool place until ready to serve.

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.

Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,130 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Cheese + olivetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,802 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

Cheese: Provides rich flavor and a creamy, spreadable body to the filling.
Pimento olives: Add salty, briny flavor and bits of texture throughout the filling.
Mayonnaise: Adds moisture and fat, binding the filling into a smooth, spreadable mixture.

“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.