Name: Nut Sandwiches
Ingredients: Gruyere cheese; fresh walnuts; thin slices of bread; made mustard; boiled chestnuts (optional); slices of lemon; dry sherry (for serving)

Why it works: Mustard and chestnut share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 80 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Nut Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Finely mince the Gruyere cheese and fresh walnuts in equal parts.
Butter the thin slices of bread with made mustard.
Spread the cheese and walnut mixture on the buttered bread and press the slices together.
For a variation, use boiled chestnuts instead of walnuts.
Garnish with slices of lemon and serve with dry sherry.

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.

Mustard + chestnuttop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together80 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Walnut + chestnuttop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together60 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Walnut + mustardtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together849 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Gruyere cheese + sherrytop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).
Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,149 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the chestnut

The recipe marks chestnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (gruyere cheese, walnut, bread, mustard, lemon, sherry):

Beansfits about as well
Almondfits about as well
Chestnutthe original
Pistachiofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against gruyere cheese, walnut, bread, mustard, lemon, sherry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.