Name: Salad Sandwiches
Ingredients: mayonnaise dressing; finely chopped lobster or chicken; small slices of bread; lettuce; tinfoil or oiled paper

Why it works: Bread and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Salad Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Mix mayonnaise dressing with finely chopped lobster or chicken.
Cover a slice of bread with lettuce.
Spread a layer of the salad mixture on top.
Add another layer of lettuce and top with another slice of bread.
Wrap the sandwich in tinfoil or oiled paper.

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 + lettucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together602 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Lobster + lettucetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together411 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Lobster + breadtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together736 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).