Name: Cheese Sandwiches
Ingredients: 2 large square salted crackers; thin slices of rich American cheese; French mustard

Why it works: Cheese and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,805 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cheese Sandwiches

Ingredients

2 large square salted crackers
thin slices of rich American cheese
French mustard

Directions

Place thin slices of cheese between two large salted crackers.
Spread French mustard over the cheese.

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.

Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,805 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Rich american cheese: Melts and adds fat and savory richness that carries the sandwich's flavor.
French mustard: Adds sharp, acidic bite that cuts through the richness of the cheese.

“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.