Name: Caviare Sandwiches
Ingredients: Caviare; Thin slices of brown bread; Butter; Pepper or cayenne; Lemon juice; Watercress

Why it works: Lemon and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Caviare Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Spread half the slices of bread with caviare, seasoned with a little pepper.
Squeeze a little lemon juice over the caviare.
Put the slices together and cut them into narrow fingers.
Arrange the sandwiches in pairs, alternating directions.
Fill the center with carefully picked watercress.

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.

Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together579 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together983 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Bread + watercresstop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together307 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).