Name: Club Sandwiches
Ingredients: 3 slices stale bread; butter; thin pieces of chicken; thin strips of broiled bacon; mayonnaise or boiled dressing; thin slices of tomato; lettuce leaves; salad dressing; sweet pickles or olives

Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Club Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the crusts off the bread and toast the slices.
Spread butter on the toasted bread.
Layer chicken and bacon between two slices of bread, season, and add mayonnaise or boiled dressing.
Top with tomato slices and lettuce, then spread with salad dressing.
Cover with the third slice of toast, place on lettuce, cut diagonally, and garnish with pickles or olives. Serve immediately.

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.

Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,539 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,655 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,031 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, chicken, tomato, olive):

Capsicumfits better
Potatofits better
Onionfits better
Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, chicken, tomato, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.