Name: Sandwich Relish
Ingredients: 1 loaf of bread, sliced thin; 1 cup boiled ham, grated; whipped cream; tomato ketchup, to taste; Tabasco sauce, to taste; Worcestershire sauce, to taste; stuffed olives, for garnish

Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sandwich Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

Spread whipped cream on the slices of bread.
Sprinkle the grated ham over the cream.
Season with tomato ketchup, Tabasco, and Worcestershire sauce to taste.
Garnish with stuffed olives.

Serve

Serve on individual plates.

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.

Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,099 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,539 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Bread + olivetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 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

Bread: Provides the base that holds the cream and ham together.
Whipped cream: Adds moisture and a soft, creamy texture to the bread.
Boiled ham: Provides the savoury, meaty flavour that forms the relish.
Tomato ketchup: Adds sweetness and acidity to season the relish.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, ham, cream, ketchup, sauce, olive):

Tomatothe original
Capsicumfits about as well
Mustardfits about as well
Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, ham, cream, ketchup, sauce, olive. 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.