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Cheese and Ginger Sandwich

A sandwich made with cream cheese, preserved ginger, and a sweet syrup, spread on buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and syrup work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 950 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cheese and Ginger Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Chop preserved stem ginger very fine.

  2. Add syrup from the jar or unsweetened cream to the ginger.

  3. Mix the ginger and liquid into an equal amount of cream cheese.

Assemble

  1. Spread the mixture on buttered 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. Ginger + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together950 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Cream cheese + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together166 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Ginger + breadtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Ginger + cream cheesetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Syrup + cream cheesetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together126 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream cheese
Provides a soft, creamy base that holds the ginger and keeps the filling moist.
Preserved stem ginger
Adds sharp, sweet-spiced aroma and a bit of heat to the filling.
Syrup from jar or unsweetened cream
Adds liquid and sweetness, loosening the cream cheese so it spreads easily.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, cream cheese, bread):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, cream cheese, 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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