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French Sandwiches

A sandwich made with chopped chicken, olives, capers, and mayonnaise on thin bread slices.

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

French Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped chicken, chopped olives, and capers.

  2. Add mayonnaise dressing to the mixture and stir until well combined.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the mixture on thin slices of bread.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  3. Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Meat + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and bulk of the sandwich filling.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture, binding the chicken and olives into a spreadable mixture.
Olives
Contribute salty, briny flavor that balances the rich dressing.
Capers
Add sharp, acidic flavor that brightens the filling.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits about as well
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, chicken, olive, 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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