Name: Cheese Sandwiches or Scalloped Cheese and Rice
Ingredients: cheese; bread; butter; rice

Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Cheese Sandwiches or Scalloped Cheese and Rice

Ingredients

cheese
bread
butter
rice

Directions

Make the sandwiches

Prepare cheese sandwiches by placing cheese between two slices of bread and spreading butter on the outside.

Prepare the rice

For scalloped cheese and rice, cook the rice according to package instructions.

Bake the layers

Layer cooked rice and cheese in a baking dish, then bake until the cheese is melted and bubbly.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,130 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + ricetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,259 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together942 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese: Melts into a gooey layer that binds the dish together and adds richness.
Bread: Holds the cheese in place and gives the sandwich structure and a toasted exterior.
Butter: Adds richness and promotes browning on the outside of the bread.
Rice: Adds body and bulk, absorbing some of the melted cheese as it bakes.

“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.