Name: Cold Turkey Ham Sandwiches
Ingredients: sliced cold turkey; sliced ham; bread; butter

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 ↓

Cold Turkey Ham Sandwiches

Ingredients

sliced cold turkey
sliced ham
bread
butter

Directions

Spread butter on slices of bread.
Layer sliced turkey and ham between two slices of bread.
Cut into halves or quarters for serving.

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).
Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together822 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,592 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Turkey + hamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together303 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread: Provides the structure that holds the filling together.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, and moistens the bread so it does not soak up the filling.
Sliced cold turkey: Supplies the main protein and the bulk of the filling.
Sliced ham: Adds savoury, salty flavour and extra protein to 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.