Name: Chicken Sandwiches
Ingredients: Cooked chicken; Cooked ham or tongue; Creamed or watercress butter; 1 large French roll or white bread

Why it works: Ham and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Chicken Sandwiches

Ingredients

Cooked chicken
Cooked ham or tongue
Creamed or watercress butter
1 large French roll or white bread

Directions

Prepare the bread

Select a 1-day-old roll and rasp the crust without removing it.
Slice the roll thinly and spread with butter.

Assemble and serve

Finely shred the chicken and ham or tongue.
Place a layer of the mixture between two slices of buttered bread and press well together.
Arrange the sandwiches overlapping in a circle on a folded napkin.
Serve garnished with small salad or watercress.

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.

Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,497 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,258 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).
Watercress + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together307 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Chicken + watercresstop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together248 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken: Provides the main savoury filling and bulk of the sandwich.
Cooked ham or tongue: Adds savoury, salty flavour and a firmer texture to the chicken filling.
Creamed or watercress butter: Adds fat and moisture to the bread and helps the filling stick together.

“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.