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Pish and Egg Sandwiches

A rye bread sandwich with lettuce, flaked fish, mashed eggs, mayonnaise, and radish garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and radish share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 58 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Pish and Egg Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Spread butter on one side of each slice of rye bread.

  2. Place a lettuce leaf on one slice of bread.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the flaked fish and mashed eggs with mayonnaise dressing.

  2. Spread the fish and egg mixture on top of the lettuce.

  3. Top with the second slice of bread, buttered side down.

  4. Cut the sandwich into an egg shape.

  5. Garnish with radish.

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 + radishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Rye + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together23 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Bread + fishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Rye + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Bread + eggtop 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

Rye bread
Provides the sandwich base and holds the filling together.
Fish
Supplies the main protein and flavour of the filling.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture to the filling.
Mayonnaise dressing
Binds the filling and adds moisture and fat for a creamy texture.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rye, bread, lettuce, fish, egg):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Radishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rye, bread, lettuce, fish, egg. 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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