Name: A Sandwich
Ingredients: 2 slices of white or brown bread, ⅛ inch thick; butter; meat (ham, tongue, boiled or roast beef, mutton, poultry, or game)

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 ↓

A Sandwich

Ingredients

2 slices of white or brown bread, ⅛ inch thick
butter
meat (ham, tongue, boiled or roast beef, mutton, poultry, or game)

Directions

Spread butter on one side of each slice of bread.
Place a layer of meat between the buttered sides of the bread.
Press the slices together gently.
Remove the crusts for easier cutting, if desired.
Cut the sandwich into desired shapes.
Keep covered until ready to serve.

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 + meattop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread: Provides the structure that holds the filling together and keeps it neat.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, and coats the bread so the filling does not soak it.
Meat: Supplies the savory filling and most of the substance of the sandwich.

“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.