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Finger Sandwiches

A light sandwich made with a butter‑flour‑milk sauce and chopped chicken, lobster, or ham, served on diamond‑shaped bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Finger Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add a little flour and salt, then gradually stir in boiling milk until thickened.

  3. Cook for a few minutes, then let it cool completely.

  4. Once cold, mix in the chopped chicken, lobster, or ham.

Assemble

  1. Cut the bread into diamond shapes and fill with the mixture.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Flour
Thickens the boiling milk into a smooth, spreadable binding paste.
Boiling milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a creamy filling.
Chopped chicken, lobster, or ham
Supplies the main filling flavour and bulk within the creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling milk. Pour the milk in gradually while stirring so the starch in the flour disperses evenly; adding it all at once can form lumps that are hard to smooth out.

“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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