Name: Curried Cheese Sandwiches
Ingredients: ½ pound cheese; 3 ounces fresh butter; 2 teaspoons curry paste; slices of 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 ↓

Curried Cheese Sandwiches

Ingredients

½ pound cheese
3 ounces fresh butter
2 teaspoons curry paste
slices of bread

Directions

Prepare

Remove the rind from the cheese and cut it into small pieces.
Pound the cheese in a mortar with the butter and curry paste until well combined.

Assemble and store

Spread the mixture on thin slices of bread.
Form neatly shaped sandwiches.
Store any leftover mixture in a jar covered with clarified butter for several weeks.

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).
Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,130 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese: Provides the main body, richness and savory flavor of the filling.
Fresh butter: Binds the cheese into a spreadable paste and adds richness and moisture.
Curry paste: Supplies the spice and aroma that flavor the filling.

“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.