Name: Heart-Shaped Sandwiches: Cream Cheese and Pimento, Chicken, Olive, Pimento
Ingredients: Cream cheese; Pimento; Cooked chicken; Olives; Bread

Why it works: Chicken and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,888 recipes. Both carry acetic acid hexyl ester, which smells sweet, green. The science ↓

Heart-Shaped Sandwiches: Cream Cheese and Pimento, Chicken, Olive, Pimento

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sandwiches

Spread cream cheese on slices of bread.
Add pimento and chopped olives on top.
Layer with shredded cooked chicken.

Cut and serve

Cut the sandwiches into heart shapes.
Serve immediately.

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.

Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,888 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).
Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,258 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).
Cream cheese + olivetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,003 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).
Cream cheese + breadtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together166 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream cheese: Spreads on the bread and adds a soft, creamy, moist layer that binds the filling.
Cooked chicken: Provides the substantial, savoury filling that gives the sandwich its body.
Bread: Forms the structure that holds the filling and can be cut cleanly into shapes.
Olives: Add a salty, briny note that contrasts with the mild cream cheese.

“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.