Name: Cheese Sandwiches
Ingredients: ¼ lb cheese; 2 or 3 hard-boiled eggs; 1 oz butter; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; 1 teaspoon mustard; thin slices of buttered bread

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Cheese Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Grate the cheese.
Remove the yolks from the hard-boiled eggs and pound them.
Melt the butter.

Assemble

Mix the grated cheese, pounded yolks, melted butter, pepper, coarse sea salt, and mustard together.
Spread the mixture between thin slices of buttered bread.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,130 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,805 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

What each ingredient does

Cheese: Melts into the filling and adds richness and savory flavor.
Hard-boiled eggs: Pounded yolks give the filling a creamy, spreadable body.
Butter: Adds fat that carries flavor and keeps the filling moist and smooth.
Mustard: Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the cheese and yolks.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, egg, butter, pepper, bread):

Capsicumfits better
Asparagusfits about as well
Potatofits about as well
Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, egg, butter, pepper, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.