Name: Sardine Sandwiches
Ingredients: yolks of 2 well-cooked eggs; 1 can sardines; few drops of Tabasco sauce; bread

Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sardine Sandwiches

Ingredients

yolks of 2 well-cooked eggs
1 can sardines
few drops of Tabasco sauce
bread

Directions

Prepare

Rub the yolks of the cooked eggs to a smooth paste.
Remove skin and bones from the sardines and pound them in a mortar.

Make and serve

Mix the sardine paste with the egg yolks and season with Tabasco sauce.
Spread the mixture on slices of bread to make sandwiches.

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.

Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Sauce + breadtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,934 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Egg + saucetop 39% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,895 recipes

Egg and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,895 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks: Their fat and emulsifying proteins give the spread a smooth, creamy body.
Sardines: Pounded into a paste, they supply the main flavour and a rich, savoury body.
Bread: Provides a soft, absorbent base that holds the spread and gives the sandwich its structure.

“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.