Name: Salmon Sandwiches
Ingredients: 4 slices of bread; cream cheese; cooked salmon, chopped fine

Why it works: Cream cheese and salmon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 148 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Salmon Sandwiches

Ingredients

4 slices of bread
cream cheese
cooked salmon, chopped fine

Directions

Spread cream cheese on both sides of the salmon.
Place the salmon between two slices of bread to stick them together.
Cut into desired shapes and serve.

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.

Cream cheese + salmontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together148 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Bread + cream cheesetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together166 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Bread + salmontop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together941 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 sandwich together.
Cream cheese: Adds creaminess and moisture that help the salmon stick to the bread.
Cooked salmon: Provides the main filling and savory flavor.

“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.