Name: Sandwiches
Ingredients: Bread (Graham, whole wheat, brown, or cake); Fat (butter or margarine); Protein-rich fillings (meat, cheese, nuts, beans, fish); Salad fillings (lettuce, mayonnaise, celery, cress, tomato, cucumber); Sweet fillings (dried fruits, honey, marmalades, jellies, jams, fudge, chocolate)

Why it works: Beans and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 500 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Sandwiches

Ingredients

Bread (Graham, whole wheat, brown, or cake)
Fat (butter or margarine)
Protein-rich fillings (meat, cheese, nuts, beans, fish)
Salad fillings (lettuce, mayonnaise, celery, cress, tomato, cucumber)
Sweet fillings (dried fruits, honey, marmalades, jellies, jams, fudge, chocolate)

Directions

Use bread that is at least 24 hours old for easy slicing.
Spread a thin layer of fat on the bread to prevent sogginess.
Add your choice of protein-rich filling, ensuring it is well seasoned.
For salad sandwiches, combine lettuce with mayonnaise and add other vegetables as desired.
For sweet sandwiches, use ground dried fruits mixed with honey or your choice of spreads.

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.

Beans + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together500 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + fishtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,668 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, meat, cheese, beans, fish, lettuce):

Walnutfits better
Lima beansfits better
Peasfits better
Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, meat, cheese, beans, fish, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.