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 ↓
Bread for Sandwiches
Ingredients
Directions
Cut the bread into thin slices and remove the crusts.
Cream the butter until smooth and spread it evenly on the bread.
If using nuts, chop them finely, mix with salt, and combine with the butter or enough cream salad dressing to moisten.
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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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Bread + nutstop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together174 recipes
Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
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Nuts + creamtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together886 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
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Butter + nutstop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,291 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the nuts
The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, cream):
- Almondfits better
- Pecansfits better
- Lima beansfits better
- Nutsthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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