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Sardine Sandwiches

A sandwich made with sardine paste served between lettuce leaves on buttered crackers or rye bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sardine Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove scales and bones from the sardines and pound them into a paste.

  2. Season the paste with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

Assemble

  1. Serve the sardine mixture between two tender lettuce leaves on thinly buttered crackers or rye bread.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lettuce + ryetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together23 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + ryetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines
Provide the main filling and rich, savory flavor once pounded into a paste.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fish and balances its richness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the crackers or bread, helping the filling sit well.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, lettuce, rye. 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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