Name: Anniversary or Valentine Sandwiches
Ingredients: 1 loaf white bread, 1 day old; 1 loaf brown bread, 1 day old; soft butter or mayonnaise dressing; pounded nuts; 2 kinds of filling (your choice)

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 ↓

Anniversary or Valentine Sandwiches

Ingredients

1 loaf white bread, 1 day old
1 loaf brown bread, 1 day old
soft butter or mayonnaise dressing
pounded nuts
2 kinds of filling (your choice)

Directions

Spread the ends of the loaves with soft butter or mayonnaise dressing.
Cut the bread into thin wafer-like slices.
Use a heart-shaped cookie cutter to cut hearts from the brown bread slices.
Use a diamond-shaped cutter to cut shapes from the white bread slices.
On a slice of brown bread, spread a thin layer of one kind of filling and cover with another slice of brown bread.
On a slice of white bread, spread the other kind of filling and cover with another slice of white bread.
Repeat the process, reversing the order of fillings.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + nutstop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together174 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Butter + nutstop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,291 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).