Name: Toast Sandwiches
Ingredients: Slices of golden brown toast; Mayonnaise sauce; Chopped capers (optional); Chopped game or poultry; Fish (optional); Cress (optional)

Why it works: Sauce and capers work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Toast Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Split the slices of toast.
Place a spoonful of mayonnaise sauce on each slice.

Assemble

Add chopped capers and chopped game or poultry.
Substitute fish for the meat if desired.
Add a little cress for improvement.
Form into small sandwiches.

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.

Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together678 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Capers + fishtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together165 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Sauce + fishtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,487 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

Toast: Provides the crisp, golden base that holds the filling together.
Mayonnaise sauce: Adds moisture and richness, so the filling does not dry out the bread.
Game or poultry: Supplies the main protein filling and its savoury flavour.

“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.