Name: Chicken Mayonnaise Sandwiches
Ingredients: cold cooked chicken or ham; Mayonnaise sauce; watercress or mustard and cress; small rolls; pepper

Why it works: Watercress and pepper work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 983 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Mayonnaise Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Wash and dry the cress thoroughly, then remove the stalks.
Shred the chicken and ham finely, season with pepper, and moisten with mayonnaise sauce.
Scoop the crumb from the rolls.
Fill the rolls with a little of the chicken mixture, add a layer of cress, then a little more chicken mixture, and replace the lid.

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.

Watercress + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together983 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,958 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Sauce + watercresstop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together295 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Chicken + watercresstop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together248 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Chicken + saucetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,513 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).