Name: Dinkey Sandwiches
Ingredients: German rye bread; prepared mustard; sardines; lemon juice; Spanish onion; butter (optional)

Why it works: Rye and mustard share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Dinkey Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Cut thin slices of German rye bread.
Spread prepared mustard on the bread.
Mash the sardines and mix in lemon juice and grated Spanish onion.
Spread the sardine mixture on the bread.
If desired, spread butter on the bread before adding the sardine mixture.

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.

Rye + mustardtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together35 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,816 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Rye + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together59 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rye, bread, mustard, onion, butter):

Avocadofits better
Figfits better
Cherryfits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rye, bread, mustard, onion, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.