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 ↓
Cheese Sandwich
Ingredients
Directions
Mash the cheese and chopped walnuts together until well combined.
Spread the mixture between thin slices of day-old bread.
In a separate bowl, grate the desired amount of cream cheese.
Add a dash of cayenne pepper and soften with melted butter.
Spread the cream cheese mixture thinly between slices of buttered bread.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,130 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,962 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,039 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Cheese + walnuttop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together410 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the walnut
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, bread, pepper, butter):
- Beansfits about as well
- Lima beansfits about as well
- Walnutthe original
- Peasfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, bread, pepper, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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