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Roast Beef Sandwiches

A sandwich made with minced cold roast beef mixed with butter, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, and salt, spread on bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Roast Beef Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Mince the cold roast beef very fine.

  2. In a bowl, mix the melted butter, Worcestershire sauce, tomato ketchup, and salt.

  3. Stir the minced beef into the sauce until well combined.

Assemble

  1. Spread the mixture on buttered slices of bread.

  2. Cover with another slice 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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast beef
Provides the main filling and meaty flavour of the sandwich.
Melted butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling and coats the bread.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory, tangy depth that seasons the beef.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity that balances the savory beef.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Tomatothe original
  2. Onionfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, sauce, ketchup, 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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