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Sardine Sandwiches

A sandwich made with sardines, olives, capers, lemon juice, and buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,688 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sardine Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the crusts off the bread slices.

  2. Butter the bread and toast it.

  3. Remove the skin and bones from the sardines.

Assemble

  1. Lay the sardines carefully over the toast.

  2. Sprinkle with chopped olives and capers.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon of lemon juice to each toast.

  4. Do not cover.

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. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread toast to a golden, crisp surface.
Sardines
Provide the main savory, oily flavor and protein of the sandwich.
Capers
Add briny, sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of the sardines.
Chopped olives
Add salty, briny flavor and a soft texture to the topping.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the oily sardines and balances the salty toppings.

The step that matters

Lay the sardines carefully over the toast. Sardines are soft and break easily, so placing them gently keeps the fillets intact and the topping evenly distributed across the bread.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Cherryfits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, olive, capers. 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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