Name: Chicken Sandwiches
Ingredients: breast of cold roasted or boiled chicken; French white sauce (cold); white bread; butter; coarse sea salt

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 ↓

Chicken Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

Slice the breast of the cold chicken into thin pieces.
Dip the chicken slices into the French white sauce.

Assemble and cut

Spread butter on two slices of white bread.
Arrange the chicken on one slice of bread, sprinkle with a little salt, and top with the other slice.
Cut the sandwich into small squares, about 3 inches long and 1.5 inches wide.

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).
Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,258 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).
Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Sauce + breadtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,934 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

French white sauce: Coats the chicken slices, adding moisture and a creamy, savoury layer.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, and keeps the bread from soaking up moisture from the filling.
White bread: Provides the soft structure that holds the chicken filling together.

“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.