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Peanut Butter Sandwich

A sandwich made with peanut butter and chopped olives on whole wheat bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and peanut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 151 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Peanut Butter Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Spread peanut butter on one slice of bread.

  2. Sprinkle chopped olives over the peanut butter.

  3. Top with the second slice of bread and press firmly together.

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. Wheat + peanuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together151 recipes

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

  2. Wheat + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  4. Peanut + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,027 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  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

Peanut butter
Provides fat and richness, and its creamy texture binds the sandwich together.
Ripe olives
Add salty, savory flavor and a briny contrast to the sweet peanut butter.
Whole wheat bread
Supplies the structure that holds the filling and a slightly nutty, hearty base.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Walnutfits about as well
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Peanutthe original
  4. Chickpeafits about as well

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