Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓
Cheese and Mustard Sandwiches
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the filling
Pound and mix the broken cheese and prepared mustard.
Add a tiny drop of cream if the mixture is not soft enough.
Season with salt and pepper.
Assemble
Spread the mixture on thin buttered slices of bread.
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.
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Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,130 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,962 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together15,430 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Broken cheese
- Provides the main body, richness and savory flavor of the filling.
- Prepared mustard
- Adds sharp, acidic bite that cuts through the richness of the cheese.
- Butter
- Adds fat and flavor to the bread and helps keep it from soaking up the filling.
The step that matters
Pound and mix the cheese and mustard. The cheese must be broken down into a smooth, spreadable paste so the filling blends evenly. Lumps of unmelted or dry cheese will tear thin bread and spread unevenly.
Swap the mustard
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, cream, pepper, butter, bread):
- Potatofits better
- Capsicumfits about as well
- Onionfits about as well
- Mustardthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, cream, pepper, butter, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“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.
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