Name: Pimento Sandwiches
Ingredients: white bread; soft cheese (Eagle Brand or MacLaren's); canned red peppers, chopped fine; brown bread; mayonnaise dressing; chopped red peppers (pimentos)

Why it works: Bread and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pimento Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Spread a mixture of soft cheese and chopped canned red peppers on slices of white bread.
Spread mayonnaise dressing on brown bread and top with chopped red peppers.

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 + cheesetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,130 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,861 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Soft cheese: Binds the chopped peppers into a spreadable filling and adds creaminess.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and moisture, giving the brown bread a rich, soft layer.
Canned red peppers: Provide mild sweetness, colour and a little moisture to the filling.
White bread: Forms the structure and carries the soft cheese filling.
Brown bread: Forms the structure and carries the mayonnaise dressing and peppers.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.