Name: Cheese and Mustard Sandwich
Ingredients: ¼ pound cheese, grated; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon mustard; a dash of cayenne pepper; 1 tablespoon butter, melted; 1 teaspoon lemon juice (optional); thin slices of whole wheat or white bread

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cheese and Mustard Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

In a bowl, mix the grated cheese with salt, mustard, cayenne pepper, and melted butter, stirring thoroughly to combine all ingredients.
If desired, add lemon juice and mix well.

Assemble

Spread the cheese mixture on thin slices of bread.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,805 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,816 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese: Melts and binds with butter to form a spreadable, flavourful filling.
Butter: Adds fat that makes the cheese mixture smooth and spreadable.
Mustard: Adds sharp, pungent flavour that balances the richness of the cheese.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, mustard, pepper, butter, wheat):

Avocadofits better
Figfits about as well
Limefits about as well
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, mustard, pepper, butter, wheat. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.