Name: Cheese Sandwich to Serve with Salid
Ingredients: Bread, sliced thinly; Butter, for spreading; Swiss cheese, sliced thinly; Cayenne pepper, to taste

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 ↓

Cheese Sandwich to Serve with Salid

Ingredients

Bread, sliced thinly
Butter, for spreading
Swiss cheese, sliced thinly
Cayenne pepper, to taste

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sandwich

Butter the slices of bread.
Place thin slices of Swiss cheese between the buttered slices.
Season the cheese with a little cayenne pepper.

Bake and serve

Dip the sandwiches in melted butter.
Place in a 400°F (200°C) oven for a few minutes until the bread is brown.
Serve hot.

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).
Butter + swiss cheesetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together413 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + swiss cheesetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together35 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread: Forms the structure that holds the cheese and browns in the oven.
Swiss cheese: Melts into the filling and gives the sandwich its main savory flavor.
Butter: Adds fat that helps the bread brown and crisp in the oven.

“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.