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Cream Sandwiches

Cream Sandwiches are sandwiches filled with a smooth paste of yolks, butter, cream, grated ham or tongue, mustard, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cream Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the eggs for 30 minutes.

  2. Drop the eggs in ice water until cold.

  3. Mix the yolks with butter and enough cream to create a smooth paste.

  4. Add the grated meat, dry mustard, and cayenne pepper to the yolk mixture.

Assemble the sandwiches

  1. Cut the bread into thin slices, removing the crusts.

  2. Spread the mixture between two slices to form sandwiches.

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.

  1. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks bind with butter and cream to form the smooth, spreadable filling.
Ham or tongue
Supplies the savoury meat flavour that makes up the body of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the yolk filling spread smoothly.
Cream
Adds moisture so the yolk and butter blend into a smooth paste.

The step that matters

Chill the eggs in ice water. Plunging boiled eggs into ice water stops the cooking quickly, which keeps the yolks from turning grey-green and makes them easier to peel and crumble into a smooth paste.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, egg, butter, cream, pepper, bread):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, egg, butter, cream, pepper, 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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