Name: Green Sandwiches
Ingredients: parsley; dressing; slices of bread; crisp lettuce leaves

Why it works: Parsley and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,483 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Green Sandwiches

Ingredients

parsley
dressing
slices of bread
crisp lettuce leaves

Directions

Chop parsley very fine.
Stir the chopped parsley into the dressing.
Spread the mixture onto the slices of bread.
Place a crisp lettuce leaf between each sandwich.

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.

Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Bread + lettucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together602 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,588 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).