Name: Cheese Sandwiches
Ingredients: 1 hard boiled egg; 1 teaspoon prepared mustard; 1 tablespoon vinegar; ½ lb American cheese; 1 tablespoon melted butter; ¼ teaspoon salt; 2 drops Tabasco sauce; thin slices of bread

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

Cut the cheese into small pieces.
In a bowl, combine the cheese, egg, mustard, vinegar, melted butter, salt, and Tabasco sauce.
Beat the mixture until it forms a creamy paste.

Assemble

Spread the creamy mixture on 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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,130 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mustard + cheesetop 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

American cheese: Melts into a creamy base that binds the spread together.
Hard boiled egg: Adds body and richness, helping the paste hold together.
Melted butter: Adds fat for a smoother, silkier texture in the spread.
Vinegar: Adds a sharp acidity that balances the rich cheese and butter.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, vinegar, cheese, butter, sauce, bread):

Mustardthe original
Capsicumfits about as well
Shallotfits less well
Tomatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, cheese, butter, sauce, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.