Name: Walnut Sandwiches
Ingredients: 1 pound English walnuts, chopped; mayonnaise dressing; bread, cut into fancy shapes (round, square, or triangular)

Why it works: Walnut and bread work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 714 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Walnut Sandwiches

Ingredients

1 pound English walnuts, chopped
mayonnaise dressing
bread, cut into fancy shapes (round, square, or triangular)

Directions

Prepare the filling

Chop the walnuts into small pieces.
Mix the chopped walnuts with mayonnaise dressing.

Assemble

Cut the bread into fancy shapes.
Spread the walnut mixture on the bread.
Set the sandwiches 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.

Walnut + breadtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together714 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

English walnuts: Provide the crunchy texture and nutty flavour that make up the filling.
Mayonnaise dressing: Binds the chopped walnuts together and adds moisture and richness to the spread.
Bread: Forms the base of each sandwich and holds the walnut filling in its fancy shape.

“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.