Name: Pate De Foie Gras Sandwiches
Ingredients: thin slices of white bread; butter; paté de foie gras; sweet red pepper

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 ↓

Pate De Foie Gras Sandwiches

Ingredients

thin slices of white bread
butter
paté de foie gras
sweet red pepper

Directions

Spread thin slices of white bread lightly with butter.
Spread paté de foie gras on top of the buttered bread.
Add two strips of sweet red pepper on top of the paté.
Put two slices together and cut into diamond shapes.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

White bread: Provides the structure and soft base that holds the filling together.
Butter: Adds fat and richness and helps keep the bread from soaking up the paté.
Paté de foie gras: Supplies the rich, creamy filling that gives the sandwich its main flavour and texture.
Sweet red pepper: Adds mild sweetness and a contrasting crisp, fresh bite against the rich paté.

“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.