Name: Making Dainty Sandwiches
Ingredients: light bread; home-cured ham; fresh butter

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 ↓

Making Dainty Sandwiches

Ingredients

light bread
home-cured ham
fresh butter

Directions

Cut the crust off the loaf of bread and slice it into thin pieces.
Shave the ham into very thin slices.
Spread fresh butter on one side of each slice of bread.
On the buttered side of half the slices, sprinkle a generous amount of ham.
Top with the other half of the bread, buttered side down, and press lightly together.
Arrange the sandwiches on a plate.
Optionally, cut the sandwiches into triangles or roll them up and tie with ribbons for serving.

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 + hamtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).