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Nut Sandwich

A sandwich made with white bread, butter, walnuts, olives, and mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,087 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Nut Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sandwich

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

  2. On the unbuttered side, layer chopped walnuts and olives.

  3. Drizzle mayonnaise dressing over the nuts and olives.

  4. Top with the second slice of bread, buttered side facing out.

Serve

  1. Cut into halves or quarters to serve.

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. Walnut + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Bread + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + olivetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Add crunch and a rich, slightly bitter nuttiness to the filling.
Olives
Contribute salty, briny flavor that contrasts with the fat and bread.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds moisture and fat, binding the nuts and olives and keeping the bread from drying.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the bread and helps it brown lightly on the outside.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, olive):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Lima beansfits about as well
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, olive. 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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