Name: Brown-bread Sandwiches
Ingredients: butter; finely chopped onion; horseradish; brown bread

Why it works: Onion and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Brown-bread Sandwiches

Ingredients

butter
finely chopped onion
horseradish
brown bread

Directions

Cream the butter until it reaches a spreading consistency.
Mix in the finely chopped onion and a little horseradish.
Spread the mixture on thin slices of brown bread to make sandwiches.

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.

Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,784 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,676 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Horseradish + breadtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together240 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).