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 ↓
Ribbon Sandwiches
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the bread
Cut one slice of white bread and two slices of brown bread.
Spread butter on both sides of the white bread.
Assemble and slice
Press the slices together with the white bread in the center.
Cut the sandwich into thin slices.
Make the filling
Finely chop cheese, pimento, green pepper, nuts, olives, and gherkins.
Moisten the chopped additions with salad dressing.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,130 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,962 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Bread + olivetop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,091 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,263 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, and keeps the bread from soaking up moisture from the filling.
- Salad dressing
- Moistens the chopped additions so the filling is soft and holds together.
Swap the nuts
The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, cheese, pepper, olive):
- Beansfits better
- Walnutfits better
- Lima beansfits better
- Nutsthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, cheese, pepper, 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.
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