Name: Boiled, Smoked, Ob Pickled Tongue
Ingredients: slices of bread; butter; thinly sliced tongue; watercress or curly parsley

Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Boiled, Smoked, Ob Pickled Tongue

Ingredients

slices of bread
butter
thinly sliced tongue
watercress or curly parsley

Directions

Remove the crust from the bread unless it is very soft.
Butter the slices of bread.
Place thin slices of tongue between the buttered slices.
Roll the sandwich lengthwise and tie with a narrow ribbon.
Arrange in a basket or on a plate lined with watercress or curly parsley.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + watercresstop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together307 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter + watercresstop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together842 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).