Name: Hot Sandwich
Ingredients: 2 slices white bread, buttered and toasted; hot creamed codfish; 1 teaspoon finely chopped hard boiled eggs; watercress or parsley for garnish; 1 sour pickle

Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Hot Sandwich

Ingredients

2 slices white bread, buttered and toasted
hot creamed codfish
1 teaspoon finely chopped hard boiled eggs
watercress or parsley for garnish
1 sour pickle

Directions

Place hot creamed codfish between the two buttered, toasted slices of white bread.
Top the sandwich with a teaspoon of the codfish and sprinkle with finely chopped hard boiled eggs.
Garnish with watercress or parsley and a sour pickle.
Serve very hot.

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 + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Bread + watercresstop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together307 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Egg + watercresstop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together638 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

White bread: Buttered and toasted slices hold the creamed codfish and give the sandwich a crisp, sturdy structure.
Creamed codfish: Provides the moist, savory filling that makes up the body of the sandwich.
Hard boiled eggs: Chopped finely and sprinkled on top, they add a soft, mild texture and richness.

“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.