Name: Cottage Cheese Sandwiches
Ingredients: ½ pound cottage cheese or Neufchatel cheese, riced; ¼ cup pimentos or stuffed olives, chopped; Salt, to taste; Cream, as needed; ½ cup chopped walnuts (optional); Thin slices of bread

Why it works: Olive and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,087 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Cottage Cheese Sandwiches

Ingredients

½ pound cottage cheese or Neufchatel cheese, riced
¼ cup pimentos or stuffed olives, chopped
Salt, to taste
Cream, as needed
½ cup chopped walnuts (optional)
Thin slices of bread

Directions

Make the filling

In a bowl, combine the riced cottage cheese and salt.
Mix in enough cream to create a smooth paste.
Gently stir in the chopped pimentos.
If desired, add the chopped walnuts.

Assemble

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.

Olive + walnuttop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,087 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Cottage cheese + olivetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together205 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).
Cottage cheese + walnuttop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together46 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Cottage cheese + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together72 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Cottage cheese: Forms the creamy base of the filling and provides most of its body.
Cream: Adds moisture so the cheese becomes a smooth, spreadable paste.
Pimentos or stuffed olives: Add flavour and a little moisture and colour to the filling.
Walnuts: Add crunch and a nutty texture to the smooth filling.

Swap the walnut

The recipe marks walnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cottage cheese, olive, cream, bread):

Beansfits about as well
Walnutthe original
Almondfits about as well
Pecansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cottage cheese, olive, cream, 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.