Name: Walnut Sandwiches
Ingredients: 1 cup walnuts, finely chopped; ½ cup salad dressing or cream cheese; Coarse sea salt, to taste; Good brown bread

Why it works: Walnut and cream cheese work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 439 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Walnut Sandwiches

Ingredients

1 cup walnuts, finely chopped
½ cup salad dressing or cream cheese
Coarse sea salt, to taste
Good brown bread

Directions

Chop the walnuts very fine.
Mix the chopped walnuts with salad dressing or cream cheese.
Season the mixture with coarse sea salt to taste.
Spread the filling between slices of good brown bread.

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.

Walnut + cream cheesetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together439 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Cream cheese + breadtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together166 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Walnut + breadtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together714 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts: Provide the crunchy texture and nutty flavour that make up the filling.
Cream cheese: Binds the chopped walnuts into a spreadable filling and adds creamy richness.
Salad dressing: Binds the chopped walnuts into a spreadable filling and adds tangy sweetness.