Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓
Fish Sandwiches
Ingredients
Directions
Cut the bread and butter as you would for other sandwiches.
Place thin scallops of fish on the slices.
Spread Tartar sauce over the fish.
Add a layer of finely-sliced lettuce on top of the sauce.
Cover with another slice of bread and butter.
Cut into squares to serve.
Optionally, add thin slices of hard-boiled eggs.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,037 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Scallop + saucetop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together130 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Bread + fishtop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,668 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,488 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the lettuce
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, scallop, fish, sauce, pepper, egg):
- Capsicumfits better
- Shallotfits better
- Tomatofits better
- Lettucethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, scallop, fish, sauce, pepper, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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