Name: Mixed Sandwiches
Ingredients: equal quantities of cold ham, tongue, and chicken; ½ cup melted butter; 1 tablespoon salad oil; 1 tablespoon mustard; powdered yolks of 2 hard-boiled eggs; a little white pepper; thinly sliced buttered bread

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 ↓

Mixed Sandwiches

Ingredients

equal quantities of cold ham, tongue, and chicken
½ cup melted butter
1 tablespoon salad oil
1 tablespoon mustard
powdered yolks of 2 hard-boiled eggs
a little white pepper
thinly sliced buttered bread

Directions

Prepare

Chop the cold ham, tongue, and chicken finely.

Make the filling

Mix the chopped meat with melted butter, salad oil, mustard, powdered egg yolks, and white pepper.

Assemble

Spread the mixture on thinly sliced buttered 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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Chicken + mustardtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,192 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Ham + chickentop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,497 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold ham, tongue, and chicken: Form the bulk of the filling and give it its meaty texture.
Melted butter: Adds richness and moisture so the filling spreads smoothly and stays soft.
Powdered egg yolks: Thicken the filling slightly and add richness to bind the meat together.
Mustard: Adds sharpness that cuts through the richness of the butter and meat.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, chicken, butter, mustard, egg, bread):

Capersfits better
Tarragonfits better
Thymefits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, chicken, butter, mustard, egg, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.