Name: Cheese Sandwiches
Ingredients: American cheese, thinly sliced; Brick cheese, thinly sliced; Swiss cheese, thinly sliced; Rye bread, thinly sliced; Wheat bread, thinly sliced; Butter

Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cheese Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Spread butter on slices of rye or wheat bread.
Place thin slices of cheese between two slices of the buttered bread.
Cut the sandwich into desired shapes and serve.

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 + wheattop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together404 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cheese + swiss cheesetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together65 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Bread + buttertop 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).
Swiss cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together413 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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 filling that adds richness and savoury flavour.
Brick cheese: Adds mild, buttery flavour and a soft, creamy texture to the filling.
Swiss cheese: Adds nutty flavour and stretchy melt, contributing to the filling's texture.
Butter: Adds fat and flavour to the bread and helps it brown lightly.

“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.