Recipes

16 Great Food Loves Throughout Time

Peanut butter and jelly, pretzels and beer…some food combinations are just meant to be together. Here's how the greatest food loves of all time met their matches.
Image may contain Food Bread Toast and French Toast
Alex Lau

From tomato soup and grilled cheese to chocolate and peanut butter, these foods have found their better halves. Celebrate the greatest food loves of all time with these recipes…and totally true stories of how they met.

  • Image may contain Plant Food Nut Vegetable and Almond
    Danny Kim
    1/16

    PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY: Salted Peanut Butter and Jelly Blondies

    PB&J have known each other since they were kids. They met on a forced playdate at the swing set, and although peanut butter was a little shy, always-crazy jelly coaxed out a giggle. They stayed friends throughout grade school, but once PB worked up the courage to ask J to be its prom date, it was game on. They've been shacking up ever since.

    View Recipe
  • Image may contain Food Egg and Bowl
    ©Romulo Yanes
    2/16

    BACON AND EGGS: Bacon Deviled Eggs

    Bacon and eggs met at a hotel's continental breakfast during a conference at a midsize Midwestern city. Their eyes locked over the chafing trays, and they fell instantly, intensely in love.

    View Recipe
  • Image may contain Food Bread Toast and French Toast
    Alex Lau
    3/16

    TOMATO AND GRILLED CHEESE: Tomato Grilled-Cheese Soup

    Grilled cheese is a bit of a prima donna, if you know what we mean. It was convinced it needed no partner, no romance, no warm, creamy tomato-based soup. And yet, tomato soup persisted. It left coral-colored roses on grilled cheese's doorstep for months before finally landing a date.

    View Recipe
  • Image may contain Food Bread Dessert Muffin Chocolate Cookie Biscuit Fudge Confectionery Sweets and Cocoa
    4/16

    COOKIES AND CREAM: Blueberry and Cream Cookies

    Cookies and cream both frequented the same corner café. They glanced shyly at each other for months before cookies finally worked up the nerve to offer a lighthearted comment on cream's order (an americano, black). They've been steady since their first date (at a coffee shop, natch.)

    View Recipe
  • Image may contain Food Fries Cutlery Fork Dish and Meal
    Alex Lau
    5/16

    BURGERS AND FRIES: Diner Burger

    Burger and fries spent an entire night dancing under a glittering, spinning disco ball before they knew one another's name. It wasn't until they left the discotheque that burger asked fries out for a late night bite. Happily for all of us, they bonded over a shared love of ketchup and mayonnaise.

    View Recipe
  • Cacio e pepe pasta on a white plate placed on a wooden surface
    Photograph by Isa Zapata, Food Styling by Sean Dooley
    6/16

    PASTA AND CHEESE: Cacio e Pepe

    They met online.

    View Recipe
  • Image may contain Food Dish Meal Platter and Plant
    peden and munk llc
    9/16

    TOMATOES AND MOZZARELLA: Heirloom Tomato Caprese

    These two crazy kids met on a semester abroad. Tomatoes was studying fashion, while mozzarella was apprenticing in a famous Italian restaurant. Their courtship was the stuff romance novels are made of: picnics on the beach, long car rides down winding countrysides, and wine tastings among the oldest vines. They're probably going to retire in Italy together.

    View Recipe
  • Image may contain Food Bread Toast and French Toast
    Alex Lau
    10/16

    CINNAMON AND SUGAR: Cinnamon Sugar Apples

    This pair may look like sweet, spice, and everything nice, but the truth they'll never reveal? They met at a Fifty Shades of Grey book club.

    View Recipe
  • Image may contain Plant Fruit Orange Food and Citrus Fruit
    Romulo Yanes
    15/16

    LEMON AND HONEY: Lemon-Honey Tart with Salted Shortbread Crust

    This was a second marriage for both parties. They met later in life at the senior citizen recreation center (Tuesday early bird dinner), and they've been able to infuse their relationship with the wisdom and knowledge that only comes with experience.

    View Recipe
  • Image may contain Food and Waffle
    Romulo Yanes
    16/16

    HAM AND CHEESE: Ham-and-Cheese Waffles

    "Come here often?" Ham asked cheese, who was sitting alone at the bar, absent-mindedly playing with the rim of her martini glass. As a matter of fact, she did; but since the two got together, they've been spending many more nights cozied up at home than at the cocktail lounge.

    View Recipe
Senior Associate Web Editor. When she’s not torturing herself by grinding coffee beans by hand and making her own butter, Rochelle writes about cooking techniques and seasonal eating for bonappetit.com. She comes to BA by way of a small farm in Central New York, where she worked as a farmhand ... Read More
Explore Bon AppétitLove Week