Name: Delmonico Sandwiches
Ingredients: ½ cup chopped ham; ⅓ cup chopped chicken; 1 package Philadelphia cream cheese or an equal quantity of cottage cheese; chopped olives to taste; chopped celery to taste; vinegar pickle to taste; Mayonnaise Dressing to taste; thin slices of buttered bread

Why it works: Ham and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Delmonico Sandwiches

Ingredients

½ cup chopped ham
⅓ cup chopped chicken
1 package Philadelphia cream cheese or an equal quantity of cottage cheese
chopped olives to taste
chopped celery to taste
vinegar pickle to taste
Mayonnaise Dressing to taste
thin slices of buttered bread

Directions

Mix the chopped ham, chopped chicken, cream cheese (or cottage cheese), chopped olives, chopped celery, and vinegar pickle in a bowl, then combine well with mayonnaise dressing.
Spread the mixture between thin slices of buttered bread.

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.

Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,888 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).
Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Olive + celerytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,667 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,297 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream cheese: Adds creamy body and moisture that binds the filling together.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and moisture, helping the chopped filling cling together.
Ham: Provides savory meaty flavor and bulk to the filling.
Chicken: Provides savory protein and bulk to the filling.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, chicken, cream cheese, olive, vinegar, bread):

Garlicfits better
Capersfits better
Thymefits about as well
Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, chicken, cream cheese, olive, vinegar, bread. 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.