Alton gets some help at the olive bar from olive aficionado Debbie Peterson. She offers tips on selecting olives and shares her favorite varieties.

Alton: This guy may be Mickey Rooney in stature, but in taste? It’s Mickey Mantle! And that’s enough to qualify it as... (Good Eats theme plays)

Alton: The only difference between a green olive and a black olive is time. A black olive is the fully ripe fruit of this tree, whereas green olives are harvested when they are full size but still immature.

Alton: Since they are so gosh darned bitter, all green olives regardless of the variety have to soak in a lye solution before they can move on to the brining process.

Alton: Open stock olives like this should be kept refrigerated in their brine, and they will keep a lot longer if they stay submerged, so if they start drying out, just dissolve a tablespoon of salt in a pint of water and use that brine to keep them topped off.

Lady of the Refrigerator: And, listen, riddle me this: If, as you say, olives are so bad for you, why have they been so important to mankind, and why are doctors so crazy about olive oil, hmmm?

Alton: No dish delivers olive-y goodness quite like the olive paste of Provence, tapanade. I realize that innumerable permutations of this dish exist. I think the real secret is in creating not only a contrast of flavors, but a contrast of textures. I do this by using a combination of soft-fleshed, easy to pit olives and some firm-fleshed, not so easy to pit olives.

Dr. Snell: You should have used a pitter.
Alton: (talking around instruments) Wats ah wuuniaster...
Dr. Snell: Well, that may be true. It may be a unitasker, but if you had used that unitasker, maybe I wouldn't be needing to use this unitasker (shows Alton a rather large pair of extraction pliers). And Miss Wong, we may need those number seven forceps as well.
W: (appearing on Alton’s other side) Of course, Dr. Snell!
(Alton screams incoherently...)

Alton: This is quick bread, and therefore will toughen if it is overstirred, of course, because of the moisture mixing with the protein in the flour. So we’ll only mix enough to bring this together. (after just a few turns of the spatula) That’s it. Just walk away! Just walk away. I know, some lumps, some little dry places, that’s okay.

Announcer: And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for... the Grand Prize winner of this year’s giant food competition: Alton Brown!
McGregor: I don’t get it. The thing is so small you couldn’t even put a ribbon around it. I just don’t understand it.
Alton: Well, McGregor, maybe in the rock/paper/scissors of agricultural competition occasionally flavor wins out over 28.5 pounds of woody blandness. But don’t feel bad – third place ain’t too shabby!
Chuck: It’s the noisy cricket factor, that’s what it is!
McGregor: Boy, I don’t understand a word you just said!
Alton: Yeah, yeah, but I read you loud and clear, Chuck. It’s a tiny oval, but it is packed with flavor, and it’s a flavor that’s as versatile and vital as it was 10,000 years ago. It isn’t just about flavor, guys. These things are gosh-darn good for you!

Both “Farmer McGregor” and Alton’s occasional “busted like Benjamin Bunny” trace their origins to the stories of Beatrix Potter. Benjamin Bunny broke into Farmer McGregor’s field to steal food, but was caught by a cat and spent hours trapped until his father rescued him.

Alton warns viewers about the caustic properties of lye, commenting that anyone who watched the movie Fight Club already understands this. Fight Club released in 1999 and based on the Chuck Palahnuik novel, features the manufacture of a special sort of soap as one of its plot elements; soap makers use lye.

Alton wears heavy solvent proof "Dr. No" gloves to handle lye. In the very first James Bond film, (Dr. No, 1962) the villainous genius Dr. Julius No hatched a plan to disrupt the United States space program. His plan involved radiation, which so disfigured his hands that he wore heavy gloves to conceal them at all times.

The Lady of the Refrigerator asks Alton to “Riddle Me This” during her discussion of the nutritive value of olives. This is a classic catchphrase of perennial Batman foe The Riddler, a twisted genius psychologically compelled to reveal the details of his schemes as elaborate puzzles, word games and riddles, often with several layers of indirection to them.

Alton’s perennial equipment guru W makes an appearance here. She parodies James Bond’s irascible armorer Q. She helps Alton learn how to choose an olive pitter, and helps his dentist Dr. Snell with an array of very sharp instruments for use on poor Alton's aching tooth...

Alton’s dentist Dr. Snell is a parody of the sinister Laurence Olivier character Dr. Christian Szell, a dentist who tortured Dustin Hoffman’s character Thomas Levy with a variety of dental instruments in 1974’s Marathon Man. Alton has referred to this film in at least one other script.

Chuck describes the olive’s small size and commanding culinary presence using the phrase "noisy cricket factor." In 1997’s Men in Black the titular men armed themselves with various alien munitions, including the Noisy Cricket, a weapon that fit entirely in the palm of the hand but packed sufficient recoil to knock a grown man from his feet.

Alton claims he occasionally marinates olives in an ice-cold mixture of vermouth and gin, and then says this is another show. He's referring to an episode from earlier in the ninth season entitled Raising the Bar, where he provided recipes for a number of popular beverages including the martini and several of its variations.

Alton mentions the use of lye to extract bitter oleuropein from green olives. He notes that it is dangerous and advises viewers to read about it before attempting to home cure olives, and to get a pair of heavy gloves. But beyond that he does not discourage it. By the time he covers the food use of lye again in Pretzel Logic, he AND his "lawyers" will actively discourage the use of lye, going so far as to provide an alternate recipe.