Name: Salad Sandwiches
Ingredients: 24 thin slices of bread; 2 small tomatoes; 1 very small lettuce; 1 bunch of garden cress; 2 tablespoons salad oil; 1 tablespoon vinegar; pepper; salt

Why it works: Lettuce and garden cress share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salad Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

Shred the lettuce and garden cress finely.
Mix the shredded salad with salad oil, vinegar, pepper, and salt.

Assemble the sandwiches

Spread a little of the salad mixture on half of the bread slices.
Top with the remaining bread slices, press together, and trim the edges neatly.

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 + garden cresstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together15 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,655 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

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 shredded salad filling.
Lettuce: Adds crisp, fresh texture and bulk to the filling.
Garden cress: Adds a peppery, fresh flavour and crunch to the filling.
Salad oil: Adds fat and richness and helps the seasoning coat the leaves.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the greens.

Swap the garden cress

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, tomato, lettuce, vinegar, pepper):

Tarragonfits better
Celeryfits better
Parsleyfits better
Garden cressthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, tomato, lettuce, vinegar, pepper. 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.