Name: Cheese and Sardine Sandwiches
Ingredients: equal parts boned and skinned sardines; cream cheese; pepper; coarse sea salt; rye bread; sour pickle

Why it works: Rye and bread work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 59 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Cheese and Sardine Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Mash equal parts of boned and skinned sardines and cream cheese.
Season the mixture with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Spread the mixture between slices of rye bread.
Cut the sandwich long and narrow.
Serve with a sour pickle.

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.

Rye + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together59 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Pepper + ryetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together80 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Cream cheese + breadtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together166 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Cream cheese + ryetop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines: Provide the main savory, fatty flavour and the body of the filling.
Cream cheese: Adds fat and creaminess, binding the mashed sardines into a spreadable filling.
Rye bread: Gives a sturdy base that holds the moist filling and adds a earthy, slightly sour flavour.

“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.