Name: Sausage Sandwiches
Ingredients: small link sausage; buttered bread; delicate lettuce leaves; cucumber pickles

Why it works: Lettuce and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sausage Sandwiches

Ingredients

small link sausage
buttered bread
delicate lettuce leaves
cucumber pickles

Directions

Split the sausages lengthwise and broil on each side until cooked.
Allow the sausages to cool.
On buttered bread, layer delicate lettuce leaves.
Place the broiled sausages on top of the lettuce.
Add thin slices of cucumber pickles.
Top with another piece of buttered bread.
Cut the sandwiches into small squares.

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.

Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Bread + lettucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together602 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Bread + cucumbertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together344 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).