Name: New Sandwiches
Ingredients: 1 pint boiled chestnuts; 2 chicken livers; salt to taste; lemon juice to taste; pepper to taste; bread for spreading

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

New Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Remove the brown skin from the chicken livers by pouring boiling water over them after boiling.

Make and serve

Mash the chicken livers and boiled chestnuts together to form a paste.
Season the paste with salt, lemon juice, and pepper to taste.
Spread the mixture on slices of 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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Chestnut + lemontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together381 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Chestnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together826 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Chestnut + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together191 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,258 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken livers: Provide the rich, savoury base that gives the paste its body and flavour.
Boiled chestnuts: Add starchy bulk and a mild, sweet texture that softens the liver flavour.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver and chestnut flavour.

Swap the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, liver, lemon, pepper, bread):

Beansfits about as well
Peasfits about as well
Chestnutthe original
Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, liver, lemon, pepper, 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.