Name: A Delightful Sandwich
Ingredients: 2 slices of light bread; butter; 3-4 thin slices of salt or fresh meat (turkey or chicken)

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 ↓

A Delightful Sandwich

Ingredients

2 slices of light bread
butter
3-4 thin slices of salt or fresh meat (turkey or chicken)

Directions

Spread butter on both slices of bread.
Place 3-4 thin slices of meat between the slices of bread.
If serving for a party, prepare several sandwiches and stack them neatly.

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).
Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Light bread: Provides the soft structure that holds the filling together.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the bread, and helps keep it from soaking up moisture from the filling.
Turkey or chicken meat: Supplies the savory protein filling that gives the sandwich its main flavor and substance.

“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.