Name: Chicken and Almond Sandwiches
Ingredients: chicken meat; almond paste (made from blanched almonds); sweet cream; cayenne or paprika; celery salt; buttered brown bread

Why it works: Almond and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 485 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Chicken and Almond Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken meat as in the previous recipe.
Chop blanched almonds to make almond paste and chill until stiff.
Moisten the almond paste with sweet cream to the desired consistency.
Season the mixture with cayenne or paprika and celery salt.
Spread the mixture between thin slices of buttered brown bread to make sandwiches.

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.

Almond + celerytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together485 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,449 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,258 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).
Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,375 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, meat, cream, celery, bread):

Beansfits better
Peanutfits better
Walnutfits better
Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, cream, celery, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.