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Chicken and Nut Sandwich

A sandwich made with old bread, butter, boiled or roast chicken, mayonnaise, and chopped walnuts or pecans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Chicken and Nut Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Remove the crusts from all four sides of the loaf of bread.

  2. Cut the loaf into 4 slices lengthwise using a long, sharp knife.

  3. Spread 3 of the slices with softened butter.

Make the fillings

  1. For the chicken filling, chop the chicken finely and moisten with mayonnaise.

  2. For the nut filling, chop the walnuts or pecans and moisten with mayonnaise.

Assemble

  1. Layer the fillings between the buttered slices, using 2 layers of chicken filling and 1 layer of nut filling.

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 + chickentop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  3. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Chicken + walnuttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Provides the structure that holds the layered fillings together.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the bread so the filling does not soak it through.
Chicken
Forms the savory, substantial filling of the sandwich.
Mayonnaise
Moistens the fillings and adds fat for a creamy texture.
Walnuts or pecans
Add crunch and a nutty flavor contrast to the chicken.

The step that matters

Cut the bread into slices with a long, sharp knife. Stale bread that is at least 24 hours old holds its shape when cut thin, while a dull knife compresses the crumb and tears the slices, making neat layers harder to build.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Lima beansfits better
  2. Peanutfits better
  3. Peasfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, chicken. 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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