Name: Corned Beef
Ingredients: 2 slices of bread; 2 ounces of boiled corned beef

Why it works: Bread and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,032 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Corned Beef

Ingredients

2 slices of bread
2 ounces of boiled corned beef

Directions

Butter both slices of bread.
Place 2 ounces of boiled corned beef between the slices.
Trim the edges of the sandwich.
Wrap the sandwich in wax paper.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + beeftop 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

Bread: Provides the structure that holds the filling together and carries the sandwich.
Boiled corned beef: Supplies the savory, salty filling that makes up the main flavor of the sandwich.

“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.