Name: Sardine Sandwiches
Ingredients: 1 small box of sardines; 1 hard boiled egg for every 4 sardines; 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon salad dressing for each egg; coarse sea salt to taste; black pepper to taste; thin slices of bread

Why it works: Egg and bread 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 ↓

Sardine Sandwiches

Ingredients

1 small box of sardines
1 hard boiled egg for every 4 sardines
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon salad dressing for each egg
coarse sea salt to taste
black pepper to taste
thin slices of bread

Directions

Prepare the filling

Rinse the sardines under cold water to remove the oil.
Remove the skin from the sardines and chop them finely.
Chop a hard boiled egg for every four sardines.

Assemble

Mix the sardines and egg with salad dressing, seasoning with salt and pepper.
Spread the mixture between thin slices of bread.

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.

Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, fishy flavor and the protein base of the filling.
Hard boiled eggs: Add soft, creamy body that binds the chopped sardines into a spreadable filling.
Salad dressing: Adds moisture and tang, keeping the filling creamy and spreadable.

“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.