Name: Tomato Sandwiches
Ingredients: 1 green pepper, chopped; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; 2 tablespoons chopped chives; 3 tablespoons oil; 1 tablespoon tarragon vinegar; mayonnaise; thin slices of white bread; white pepper; salt

Why it works: Parsley and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the green pepper, parsley, chives, white pepper, and salt in a bowl.
Add the oil and tarragon vinegar, then let the mixture stand for one hour and drain.
Spread mayonnaise on thin slices of white bread.
Place the mixture between two slices of bread to make 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.

Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,563 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Chive + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together589 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,150 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,399 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, parsley, chive, tarragon, vinegar, bread):

Marjoramfits better
Thymefits better
Capersfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, parsley, chive, tarragon, vinegar, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.