Name: Nut and Egg Sandwiches
Ingredients: 1 cup pecan meats, ground; 1 cup walnut meats, ground; 2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped; 8 medium-sized olives, chopped; dressing (as for salmon salad); butter; slices of bread

Why it works: Walnut and olive 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 ↓

Nut and Egg Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

Mix the ground pecans and walnuts in a bowl.
Add the chopped hard-boiled eggs and olives to the mixture.
Moisten the mixture with dressing made for salmon salad.

Assemble

Spread the mixture between buttered 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.

Walnut + olivetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,087 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Meat + walnuttop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,035 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pecan meats: Provide the bulk of the filling and a rich, nutty flavor.
Walnut meats: Add body and a slightly bitter, nutty flavor to the filling.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add soft, moist texture and richness to the filling.
Olives: Add a salty, briny note that contrasts with the rich nuts and eggs.
Dressing: Moistens the chopped mixture so it holds together and spreads.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, egg, olive, salmon, butter, bread):

Peasfits better
Pecansfits about as well
Walnutthe original
Sesamefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, egg, olive, salmon, butter, 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.