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 ↓
Russian Sandwiches
Ingredients
Directions
Butter the thin slices of bread.
Moisten the fine-chopped olives with mayonnaise dressing and spread on the buttered slices.
Spread the other slices with cream cheese and press together in pairs.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + cream cheesetop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,747 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
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Bread + olivetop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,091 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Olive + cream cheesetop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,003 recipes
Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).
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Butter + olivetop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,887 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Butter
- Adds richness and a moist barrier that keeps the bread from soaking up the filling.
- Mayonnaise dressing
- Moistens the chopped olives so they spread easily and bind into a savoury filling.
- Cream cheese
- Adds creamy texture and a mild tang that softens the sharp olive flavour.
“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.
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