Name: Picnic Rolls
Ingredients: Dinner buns; ½ pound chopped salmon or shrimp; 1 pint mayonnaise sauce; Seasoned patty mixture of veal, ham, chicken, or fish

Why it works: Salmon and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,765 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Picnic Rolls

Ingredients

Dinner buns
½ pound chopped salmon or shrimp
1 pint mayonnaise sauce
Seasoned patty mixture of veal, ham, chicken, or fish

Directions

Prepare

Make Dinner buns (see recipe).

Fill and serve

When cool, cut off the tops and scoop out some of the center.
Fill with a seasoned patty mixture of veal, ham, chicken, or fish, or with ½ pound chopped salmon or shrimp mixed with 1 pint mayonnaise sauce.

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.

Salmon + saucetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,765 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Salmon + vealtop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together212 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Sauce + vealtop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,072 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon or shrimp: Provides the main filling flavour and a tender, moist texture when mixed with mayonnaise.
Mayonnaise sauce: Adds fat and moisture, binding the chopped seafood into a creamy filling.

“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.