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Spanish Sandwich

A sandwich made with minced sardines, olives, bell peppers, butter, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and salt, served on salted crackers or stale bread.

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

Spanish Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine sardines, olives, and bell peppers.

  2. Add melted butter and lemon juice, then season with cayenne pepper and salt.

  3. Spread the mixture between large salted square crackers or slices of slightly stale 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

  4. Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines
Provide the main savory, oily filling and rich protein base of the sandwich.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture to the filling.
Olives
Contribute salty, briny flavor and a firm bite to the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fish and balances its richness.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

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

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