Name: Cheese Sandwiches
Ingredients: ½ pound mild fresh cheese, grated; 1 tablespoon butter; 3 hard boiled egg yolks; 1 teaspoon mayonnaise; slices of bread

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

Mash the egg yolks well.
Mix the mashed yolks with the grated cheese, butter, and mayonnaise.

Assemble the sandwiches

Spread butter on thinly cut slices of bread.
Spread the cheese mixture on the buttered bread.
Roll or fold the bread to form sandwiches.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,130 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Mild fresh cheese: Provides the main body and mild flavour of the filling.
Hard boiled egg yolks: Mashed, they thicken the filling and give it a rich, creamy texture.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, and coats the bread so it does not soak up the filling.
Mayonnaise: Adds fat and moisture, helping the yolks and cheese bind into a smooth spread.

“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.