Name: Salad Sandwiches
Ingredients: cold turkey, chicken, or lobster; mayonnaise; lettuce leaves; thin slices of bread

Why it works: Turkey and bread work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 822 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Salad Sandwiches

Ingredients

cold turkey, chicken, or lobster
mayonnaise
lettuce leaves
thin slices of bread

Directions

Chop the cold meat very finely.
Mix a small amount of mayonnaise with the meat.
Place a lettuce leaf on a thin slice of bread.
Add a little of the meat mixture, another lettuce leaf, and top with another slice of bread.
Wrap in oil paper for picnics or traveling.

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.

Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together822 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Lettuce + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together602 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Turkey + lettucetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together65 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).