Name: Braised Olives
Ingredients: 1½ dozen olives; sufficient stock to cover olives; ½ cup sherry

Why it works: Olive and sherry work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 820 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Braised Olives

Ingredients

1½ dozen olives
sufficient stock to cover olives
½ cup sherry

Directions

Place the olives in a saucepan.
Add enough stock to cover the olives and ½ cup of sherry.
Cover the pan and braise on the side of the stove for about 30 minutes.

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.

Olive + sherrytop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together820 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Olives: Main ingredient that becomes tender and absorbs the flavour of the braising liquid.
Stock: Braising liquid that keeps the olives moist and carries flavour while they cook gently.
Sherry: Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the braising liquid.

“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.