Skip to main content
Main

Tongue Sandwiches

A sandwich spread made from butter, mustard, oil, salt, egg yolk, and chopped tongue, served on thin bread slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Tongue Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter until smooth.

  2. Add mustard, salad oil (or melted butter), salt, and egg yolk; mix thoroughly.

  3. Stir in enough chopped tongue to achieve a spreadable consistency.

Assemble

  1. Spread the mixture on thin slices of 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + mustardtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat and richness, creaming to a smooth base that spreads easily.
Egg yolk
Acts as an emulsifier, helping the butter and oil bind into a smooth, cohesive mixture.
Chopped tongue
Supplies the main savoury meat flavour and bulk for the spread.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, 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.

You might also like