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Peanut-Butter Sandwich Cream

A creamy peanut butter spread for sandwiches made with milk, flour, olives, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and peanut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,027 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Peanut-Butter Sandwich Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Blend the flour, water, and peanut butter to a smooth paste.

  3. Add salt, paprika, and the slightly beaten egg.

  4. Mix with the hot milk and cook for 5 minutes in the double boiler.

  5. Stir in the chopped olives and vinegar.

Finish and serve

  1. Cool and spread on 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. Olive + peanuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,027 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + peanuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,048 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Peanut butter
Provides the main body, rich nutty flavour and fat for the spread.
Egg
Thickens the mixture as it cooks, helping it set into a spreadable cream.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so it becomes smooth and spreadable rather than runny.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the paste is blended into and cooked.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich peanut butter and balances the flavour.

The step that matters

Mixing the egg and flour paste into the hot milk. Adding the egg and flour mixture to hot milk too quickly or without blending can cause lumps or curdling. Cooking gently in a double boiler and stirring keeps the egg smooth and lets the starch thicken the cream evenly.

Swap the peanut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, vinegar, egg, olive, butter):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, vinegar, egg, olive, butter. 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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