I’m looking at an interesting article, “Taking the Mystery our of Olive Oil”[1] from Restaurant Business, and this reminds me about some of the details that was explained to me in a recent gourmet Extra Virgin Olive Oil tasting I did a few months back.

(from Shutterstock[2] )

So here’s the interesting math points to work out:

• A mature olive tree produces 15–20 kilos (33 to 44 pounds ) of olives annually,
• It takes 5 kilos (11 pounds) of olives for every 1 litre of oil,
• So therefore, a single tree makes about 3 to 4 litres of oil per year.

(from Youtube - Business Insider - Inside a traditional Italian Olive Oil Mill[3] )

Now here’s the math part.

Step 1 - 5 kg (5000 g) = 1 litre of oil

Step 2 - 1 tablespoon = 15 ml

Step 3 - 1 litre (1,000 ml / 15 ml) = 66.67 tablespoons

Step 4 - 5000 g / 66.67 tablespoons = 75 grams of olives for every tablespoon of olive oil

Step 5 - Each olive is about 3–5 grams, let’s average it out at 4 grams an olive or 75 grams / 4 grams (1 olive) = 18.75 olives

So it would take about 18.75 olives to make 1 tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil as this would be a single pressing.

(from 123rf[4] )

By the way, I recently wrote an answer on why when you taste Olive Oil, the back of your throat burns and you cough when you’re tasting it as opposed to your taste buds. It’s quite an interesting scientific discovery on certain molecules that sense oleocanthal in the oil that’s only in the throat. Take a look if you’re interested.

Terry Lo's answer to Why does olive oil burn my throat?

Footnotes

It must be first understood that an olive consists of flesh, skin and pit. The flesh contains oil and vegetative water (κατσίγαρος).

Large olives do not yield necessarily more oil as they usually contain larger amounts of vegetative water, which needs to be removed ASAP from the oil as it oxidises quickly.

High yield olive trees like the Southern Greek Koroneiki feature a ratio of 4 kg of olives for 1 kg of oil.

An adult tree yields between 20 kg and 30 kg of fruit.

These olives are tiny with a very high oil content, their individual average weight being around 3 grams.

So the math is simple to get a 15 gr spoonful you need about 20 Koroneiki olives.

However other olive varieties which can be very large and are chiefly consumed as table olives (such as the Kalamata “Jumbo”) can be the size of a quail’s egg, weigh 6 gr each, but have an oil yield of 6 to 1, meaning one would need 15 of the “jumbos” to get a tablespoonful.

units / kg per type of table olives:

• Mamoth: 101-120
• Colossal: 121-140
• Giants: 141-160
• Εx-jumbo: 161-180
• Jumbo: 181-200
• Ex-large: 201-230
• Large: 231-260
• Superior: 261-290
• Brililant: 291-320
• Fine: 321-350
• Bullets: 350 -380