Name: Club Sandwiches
Ingredients: 4 slices of toasted bread; salad dressing; lettuce; thin slices of cold chicken (white meat); slices of broiled breakfast bacon; sweet pickles or olives for garnish

Why it works: Lettuce and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Club Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

Spread salad dressing on 2 slices of toasted bread.
Cover with lettuce.
Layer thin slices of cold chicken on the lettuce.
Add slices of broiled breakfast bacon on top.
Add more lettuce and cover with the remaining slices of toast spread with salad dressing.

Trim and serve

Trim the edges neatly, arrange on a plate, and garnish with heart leaves of lettuce, sweet pickles, or olives.

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 + olivetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,888 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).
Bread + olivetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,449 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Bread + chickentop 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

Toasted bread: Provides a crisp, sturdy structure that holds the layers together.
Salad dressing: Adds moisture and tangy flavor that keeps the dry toast from tasting bland.
Lettuce: Adds cool, crisp texture and moisture between the fillings.
Cold chicken: Supplies the main protein, with a mild flavor and firm, sliceable texture.
Breakfast bacon: Adds salty, smoky flavor and a crisp, fatty richness.