Name: Sandwiches
Ingredients: White, graham, or brown bread; Butter; Filling of choice (eggs, meat, fowl, fruit, fish, salads, jams, chopped nuts); Hard-boiled eggs; Cream

Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Sandwiches

Ingredients

White, graham, or brown bread
Butter
Filling of choice (eggs, meat, fowl, fruit, fish, salads, jams, chopped nuts)
Hard-boiled eggs
Cream

Directions

Remove the crusts from the bread and cut it into thin, equal slices.
Spread a thin layer of high-quality butter on each slice.
Prepare your filling by mincing or slicing it finely.
If using fish, pound it to a paste and mix with a paste made of hard-boiled eggs, cream, and butter, then season to taste.
Spread the filling evenly on one slice of bread and top with another slice.
Cut the sandwich into desired shapes, such as squares or triangles.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + fishtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,668 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Meat + fishtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together479 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, egg, meat, fish, cream):

Walnutfits better
Peasfits better
Almondfits about as well
Nutsthe original

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