Name: Beef Sandwiches
Ingredients: Cold roast beef; Tomato; Cucumber or watercress; Mustard or curry butter; White bread; Coarse sea salt; Pepper; Vinegar

Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Spread thin slices of bread with mustard or curry butter.
Cover with thinly sliced beef.
Add slices of tomato, cucumber, or watercress, seasoned with salt, pepper, and vinegar.
Cover with another slice of buttered bread, press together, trim, and cut into squares or triangles.

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.

Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,281 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,405 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,448 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, tomato, cucumber, bread, pepper, vinegar):

Capsicumfits better
Lettucefits about as well
Cauliflowerfits about as well
Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, tomato, cucumber, bread, pepper, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.