Name: Ribbon Sandwiches
Ingredients: 3 slices white bread; 2 slices whole wheat bread; Butter; 3 hard-boiled eggs; 2 tablespoons salad dressing; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste

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 ↓

Ribbon Sandwiches

makes 6 sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Butter the white and whole wheat bread slices.
Mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs.

Make and assemble

Mix the mashed yolks with salad dressing, salt, and pepper.
Spread the egg paste between the slices of bread, with white bread on the outside.
Cut the sandwich stack crosswise into thin slices, making 6 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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + wheattop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together209 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,002 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Wheat + peppertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together984 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs: Provide the creamy, rich filling that forms the body of the sandwich.
Salad dressing: Adds moisture and tang, binding the mashed yolks into a spreadable paste.
Butter: Adds fat and flavor to the bread and keeps it from soaking up the filling.

“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.