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Liptauer Sandwiches

A sandwich made with sardines, cottage cheese, cream, butter, cayenne pepper, salt, lemon rind, and onion juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Liptauer Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Remove skin and bones from the sardines and mix them with the cottage cheese until smooth.

  2. Add the cream, melted butter, cayenne, salt, lemon rind, and onion juice. Mix well.

Assemble

  1. Spread the mixture thickly between slices of bread.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Cottage cheese + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines
Provide the main savoury flavour and a rich, fishy base for the filling.
Cottage cheese
Forms the creamy body of the filling and keeps the spread moist and soft.
Thick cream
Adds richness and smoothness, softening the filling's texture.
Melted butter
Contributes fat for richness and a smooth, spreadable texture.
Lemon rind
Adds bright aromatic oils that cut the richness of the fish and cheese.

The step that matters

Mixing until smooth. Mashing the sardines fully into the cottage cheese gives an even, spreadable texture. Lumps of fish or curd left behind make the filling tear the bread and taste uneven.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cottage cheese, cream, butter, pepper, onion, bread):

  1. Pineapplefits about as well
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cottage cheese, cream, butter, pepper, onion, 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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