Name: Cold Beef Sandwich
Ingredients: remains of cold roasted beef; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 tablespoon tomato ketchup; 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce; 1 teaspoon melted butter; slices of bread, thinly buttered

Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cold Beef Sandwich

Ingredients

remains of cold roasted beef
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon tomato ketchup
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon melted butter
slices of bread, thinly buttered

Directions

Make the filling

Chop the cold roasted beef very fine and place it in a bowl.
For each ½ pint of meat, add ½ teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon tomato ketchup, 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce, and 1 teaspoon melted butter, then mix the ingredients well.

Assemble

Spread the mixture between slices of thinly buttered 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.

Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,099 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,448 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,013 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,032 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roasted beef: Provides the main filling, chopped fine so it spreads evenly between the bread.
Tomato ketchup: Adds sweetness and acidity that season the chopped beef.
Worcestershire sauce: Adds savoury depth and a tangy, salty note to the meat.
Melted butter: Adds fat and moisture so the filling feels softer and richer.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ketchup, sauce, butter, bread):

Tomatothe original
Onionfits about as well
Shallotfits about as well
Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ketchup, sauce, 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.