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Bell Pepper Sandwich

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Bell Pepper Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Spread butter on thin slices of white bread.

  2. Layer thin slices of bell pepper on the buttered bread.

  3. Top with catsup, coarse sea salt, and rich mayonnaise dressing.

  4. Add a leaf of crisp lettuce on top.

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

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

  3. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + radishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together382 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Bread + lettucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

Swap the radish

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Radishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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