Skip to main content
Main

Salad Sandwiches

A sandwich filled with paste of boiled chicken and tongue mixed with celery salt, cayenne pepper, anchovy paste, and mayonnaise, served on lettuce and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lettuce and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salad Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a mortar, pound the chicken and tongue to a paste.

  2. Add celery salt, cayenne, anchovy paste, and mayonnaise; mix well.

  3. Set the mixture aside in a cold dish.

Assemble and wrap

  1. Dip lettuce leaves in tarragon vinegar, shake off excess, and place on a slice of bread.

  2. Spread a layer of the meat mixture over the lettuce, then add another lettuce leaf on top.

  3. Top with another slice of bread, trim off the crust, and cut each sandwich in half.

  4. Wrap each piece neatly in oiled confectionery paper.

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. Lettuce + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together456 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken and tongue
Provides the meaty body and bulk of the salad filling.
Mayonnaise
Adds moisture and fat so the pounded meat spreads smoothly and stays creamy.
Anchovy paste
Adds savory depth and salty umami to the meat filling.
Celery salt
Seasons the filling with savory, salty flavor.

The step that matters

Pounding the chicken and tongue to a paste. Meat pounded until smooth breaks up its fibers so it blends evenly with the mayonnaise. Under-pounded pieces leave a lumpy, uneven texture in the spread.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, anchovy, lettuce, tarragon, vinegar, bread):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, anchovy, lettuce, tarragon, vinegar, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes