Name: Filled Bread
Ingredients: 1 loaf bread; 12 small vinegar pickles; ½ lb. tongue or ham; 12 olives; ¼ lb. Swiss cheese; 5 tablespoons sweet butter; 3 hard boiled eggs

Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Filled Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

Chop the pickles, tongue or ham, olives, Swiss cheese, and hard boiled eggs finely.
Cream the sweet butter and mix in the chopped ingredients.

Assemble and chill

Hollow out the loaf of bread and fill it with the mixture.
Wrap the loaf in a damp cloth and refrigerate overnight.

Serve

Slice and serve on lettuce leaves.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Swiss cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together413 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,297 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet butter: Softened and creamed butter binds the chopped filling together and keeps it moist.
Swiss cheese: Melts slightly into the filling, adding richness and a savory, binding texture.
Hard boiled eggs: Chopped eggs add body and a firm, creamy texture to the filling.

“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.