Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Windsor Canapes
Ingredients
Directions
Make the paste
Pound the cold chicken, cooked ham, and cooked tongue together until they form a paste.
Mix in the butter, grated cheese, mustard, and cayenne pepper until well combined.
Assemble
Spread the mixture on toasted bread slices and garnish as desired.
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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Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,962 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together15,430 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,805 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,449 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Chicken + mustardtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,192 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cold chicken white meat
- Provides the main protein body that the paste is built around.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, binding the meats into a smooth, spreadable mixture.
- Chester cheese
- Adds savoury flavour and helps bind the paste together.
- English mustard
- Adds sharp, pungent heat that cuts through the richness of the butter and meat.
The step that matters
Pounding the meats into a paste. The cold chicken, ham and tongue must be broken down finely enough to form an even paste. Pounding cold meat fully breaks its fibres, so the butter can later blend in smoothly without lumps.
Swap the mustard
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, meat, ham, butter, cheese, pepper):
- Potatofits about as well
- Mustardthe original
- Capsicumfits about as well
- Onionfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, ham, butter, cheese, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“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.
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