Name: Salad Sandwiches
Ingredients: shredded endive or lettuce; watercress; mustard; mayonnaise sauce; thin slices of bread; butter

Why it works: Endive and watercress share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 45 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salad Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, mix shredded endive or lettuce, watercress, mustard, and mayonnaise sauce lightly.
Spread butter on thin slices of bread.
Layer the salad mixture between two slices of bread.
Press the slices together firmly and cut into neat shapes.
Serve immediately.

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.

Endive + watercresstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together45 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Watercress + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together293 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Endive + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together121 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mustard + saucetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,120 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Swap the mustard

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

Shallotfits better
Lettucefits better
Chivefits better
Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against endive, watercress, sauce, bread, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.