Name: Sandwiches
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon mustard; ½ pound sweet butter; thin slices of bread; thinly sliced boiled ham

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sandwiches

Ingredients

1 tablespoon mustard
½ pound sweet butter
thin slices of bread
thinly sliced boiled ham

Directions

Make the mustard butter

Mix the mustard into the sweet butter until well combined.

Assemble and cut

Spread the mustard butter on thin slices of bread.
Place a layer of thinly sliced boiled ham between two pieces of the buttered bread.
Cut the sandwiches into desired shapes.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Mustard + hamtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together747 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Mustard + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,484 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet butter: Carries the mustard and spreads evenly, adding richness and moisture to the bread.
Mustard: Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the butter and ham.
Boiled ham: Provides the savoury, salty filling that forms the main flavour of the sandwich.