Name: Swedish Sandwiches
Ingredients: 4 ounces cream cheese; ½ cup mayonnaise sauce; 1 gherkin; 6 olives; 1 teaspoon capers; bread; butter; Krona pepper

Why it works: Olive and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,688 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Swedish Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Chop the gherkin, olives, and capers finely.
Mix the chopped ingredients with the mayonnaise sauce.
Cut thin slices of bread and butter them.

Assemble and serve

Spread half of the slices with the mixture and the other half with cream cheese.
Press one of each kind together.
Arrange on a folded serviette or dish paper and garnish with small salad or 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.

Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,688 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,747 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together678 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream cheese: Gives the sandwiches a soft, creamy filling that contrasts with the bread.
Mayonnaise sauce: Adds moisture and richness, binding the chopped pickles and capers into a spreadable filling.
Butter: Coats the bread so it stays less soggy and adds richness to each slice.
Capers: Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the rich mayonnaise and cream cheese.

Swap the capers

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

Capersthe original
Parsleyfits about as well
Garlicfits less well
Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream cheese, sauce, olive, bread, butter, pepper. 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.