Name: Egg and Sardine Sandwich
Ingredients: 1 small box of sardines; 1 hard-boiled egg for every 4 sardines; 1½ tablespoons of salad dressing for every egg used; Salt to taste; 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 ↓

Egg and Sardine Sandwich

Ingredients

1 small box of sardines
1 hard-boiled egg for every 4 sardines
1½ tablespoons of salad dressing for every egg used
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
Thin slices of bread

Directions

Prepare the filling

Remove the skin and oil from the sardines.
Pound or chop the sardines finely.
Mix with the hard-boiled egg and salad dressing until it forms a paste.
Season with salt and pepper.

Assemble

Spread the mixture over thin slices of bread and form into sandwiches.

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 flavor and the bulk of the filling.
Hard-boiled egg: Adds richness and a soft, creamy body to the paste.
Salad dressing: Adds moisture and fat so the mixture binds into a spreadable paste.

The step that matters

Mix with the hard-boiled egg and salad dressing until it forms a paste. Overmixing or undermixing changes texture: the fish and egg must be broken down finely and evenly so the dressing emulsifies with them. Uneven pieces leave dry patches or a loose, wet spread that soaks into the bread.

“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.

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Egg and Sardine Sandwich