Name: Green Pepper Sandwiches
Ingredients: 2 sweet peppers, finely chopped; 1 small onion, finely chopped; ¼ cup mayonnaise; 4 slices of bread

Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Green Pepper Sandwiches

Ingredients

2 sweet peppers, finely chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
¼ cup mayonnaise
4 slices of bread

Directions

Prepare

Chop the sweet peppers and onion very finely.
Mix the chopped peppers and onion with the mayonnaise.

Assemble and serve

Spread the mixture between the slices of bread.
Cut the sandwiches into desired shapes and serve.

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.

Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,676 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet peppers: Provide the crisp, fresh vegetable body and mild flavour of the filling.
Onion: Adds sharp, aromatic bite that balances the sweetness of the peppers.
Mayonnaise: Binds the chopped vegetables together and adds moisture and richness to the filling.
Bread: Provides the structure that holds the filling and soaks up some moisture from it.