Name: To Make Sandwiches
Ingredients: ½ pound sweet butter; 1 teaspoon mustard flour; thin slices of bread; thin slices of boiled ham

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

To Make Sandwiches

Ingredients

½ pound sweet butter
1 teaspoon mustard flour
thin slices of bread
thin slices of boiled ham

Directions

Prepare

Rub the mustard flour into the sweet butter until well combined.
Spread the butter mixture on thin slices of bread.

Assemble and serve

Place a slice of ham between two slices of the prepared bread.
Cut the sandwiches into a convenient shape and serve.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,066 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + hamtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together747 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet butter: Carries the mustard flavour and keeps the bread moist and rich.
Mustard flour: Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the butter and ham.
Bread: Forms the structure that holds the filling together.
Boiled ham: Provides the savoury, meaty filling of the sandwich.