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Toast Sandwiches

A sandwich made from toasted stale bread, buttered and spread with potted meat or fish, served at tea or evening parties.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Toast Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Remove the crust from a loaf of stale bread and cut into very thin slices.

  2. Toast the slices until they are a delicate brown.

Assemble

  1. Lightly butter the toasted slices and spread with potted meat or fish.

  2. Put two slices together and cut them into long strips with a sharp knife.

  3. Arrange the strips tastefully on a dish and serve at tea or evening parties.

Make the egg and sardine filling

  1. Pound sardines and mix with the yolks of pounded hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Use this mixture instead of potted meats.

Alternative: fry the bread

  1. Fry the bread slices in salad oil.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  4. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Forms the base of the sandwich; drier bread toasts crisp and holds the spread well.
Butter
Adds richness and a thin fat layer that keeps the toast from tasting dry.
Potted meat or fish
Provides the savoury, moist filling spread over the toast.
Sardines
Supply a rich, salty fish flavour and a paste-like texture in the filling.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks bind with the mashed sardines, giving the filling a creamy, smooth body.

The step that matters

Toast the slices until they are a delicate brown. Browning is driven by the Maillard reaction, which needs dry surface heat. Stop at a pale golden tone, because over-toasting makes the slices bitter and brittle.

“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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