Name: Fruit Sandwiches
Ingredients: whole wheat bread; peanut butter; finely chopped dates; finely chopped figs; finely chopped raisins

Why it works: Dates and fig work together. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 318 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Fruit Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Cut whole wheat bread into thin slices.
Spread peanut butter on one side of each slice.
Sprinkle finely chopped dates, figs, and raisins over the peanut butter.
Place another slice of bread on top to form a 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.

Dates + figtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together318 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Wheat + peanuttop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together151 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Fig + raisintop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together737 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Wheat + figtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together70 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, bread, peanut, butter, dates, fig):

Coconutfits better
Vanillafits better
Bananafits better
Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, bread, peanut, butter, dates, fig. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.