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Pimento Cheese Sandwich

A sandwich made with pimento cheese spread between buttered bread slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Cream cheese and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,087 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Pimento Cheese Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Grind the cream cheese and pimento peppers using a meat grinder.

  2. Mix in the cream and mayonnaise dressing until well combined.

  3. Spread the mixture between thin slices of buttered 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. Cream cheese + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  2. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  3. Cream cheese + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together166 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Cream + breadtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

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

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rich cream cheese
Provides the creamy body and fat that hold the spread together.
Pimento peppers
Add mild sweetness, color and aroma to the spread.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture for a smooth, spreadable texture.
Cream
Loosens the cheese and adds moisture for a softer spread.

The step that matters

Mix in the cream and mayonnaise dressing until well combined. Cold cream cheese stays lumpy unless it is fully blended with the liquid and fat ingredients. Thorough mixing emulsifies the fats evenly, giving a smooth spread that does not separate or clump on the bread.

“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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