Name: Egg and Cheese Sandwiches
Ingredients: 3 tablespoons grated cheese; 1 tablespoon mustard; 2 tablespoons creamed butter; 3 hard-boiled eggs; salt to taste; pepper to taste; thin slices of 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 ↓

Egg and Cheese Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fillings

In a bowl, mix the grated cheese, mustard, and 1 tablespoon of creamed butter.
Chop the hard-boiled eggs finely and season with salt and pepper.
Combine the eggs with the remaining 1 tablespoon of creamed butter to form a paste.

Assemble

Lightly butter the slices of bread.
Spread the cheese mixture on one slice and the egg mixture on another, then put them together.

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).
Mustard + peppertop 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

Hard-boiled eggs: Provide the bulk of the filling, with a creamy texture when mashed with butter.
Grated cheese: Adds savoury flavour and richness to the cheese filling.
Creamed butter: Binds the fillings into a spreadable paste and adds richness.
Mustard: Adds sharpness that cuts through the richness of the butter and cheese.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, egg, 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.