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Egg Sandwiches

Sandwiches made with sliced or mashed hard-boiled eggs spread on buttered bread, seasoned with salt and cress.

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

Egg Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble the sandwiches

  1. Cut thin slices of hardboiled eggs.

  2. Lay them on thin slices of buttered bread.

  3. Season with salt.

  4. Add mustard and cress on top.

  5. Cover with another slice of bread.

  6. Cut off the crusts.

Make the alternative filling

  1. Alternatively, mash the yolks of the hardboiled eggs.

  2. Mix with cream, olive oil, salt, and paprika or cayenne pepper.

  3. Spread the mixture on bread to finish as ham sandwiches.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Bread + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide the main filling, with yolks mashed into a creamy spread in the alternative version.
Bread
Provides the structure that holds the filling and gives each sandwich its body.
Butter
Adds richness and a fatty layer that keeps the bread from soaking up moisture from the filling.
Cream
Adds moisture and a smooth texture to the mashed yolk filling.
Olive oil
Adds fat that makes the mashed yolk filling richer and easier to spread.
Paprika or cayenne pepper
Adds aroma and gentle warmth to the filling.

The step that matters

Mash the yolks until smooth before adding the cream and olive oil. Blending the yolks well lets the cream and oil combine into a spreadable filling instead of leaving dry lumps. Fat coats the yolk particles, which makes the filling creamy.

“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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