Name: Filling for Sandwiches
Ingredients: 4 teacupfuls cold boiled chicken (or ham or tongue); 1 teaspoon salt; ½ teaspoon pepper; 5 hard boiled egg yolks; 2 tablespoons melted butter; ½ cup cream or milk

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Filling for Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the cold boiled chicken very fine.
In a bowl, combine the chopped meat with salt and pepper.
Mash the yolks of the hard boiled eggs in a separate bowl.
Add melted butter to the egg yolks and beat well.
Gradually mix in the cream or milk until smooth.
Stir the egg mixture into the chopped meat until well combined.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,902 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,958 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard boiled egg yolks: Add richness and a creamy, binding texture to the filling.
Melted butter: Adds fat, making the yolk mixture smooth and rich.
Cream or milk: Adds moisture so the yolk mixture blends into a smooth, spreadable texture.
Cold boiled chicken: Provides the main meaty body of the filling.

“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.