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Neuchatel Sandwiches

A cheese spread made with Neuchatel cheese, butter, walnuts, cayenne pepper, sherry, and salt, served on bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Neuchatel Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix the Neuchatel cheese with the butter until smooth.

  2. Add the ground walnuts, Cayenne pepper, sherry, and salt; mix well.

  3. Spread the mixture on rounds of bread to serve as canapés.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + walnuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together410 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Neuchatel or cream cheese
Forms the creamy base and gives the spread its tangy, mild flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and softens the cheese so the spread stays smooth and easy to spread.
Ground walnuts
Add nutty flavor and a slightly firm, grainy texture to the creamy base.
Sherry
Adds a little acidity and aroma that brightens the rich cheese and nuts.

The step that matters

Beating the butter into the cheese until smooth. Softened butter and cheese blend into an even, creamy base. If the mixture stays lumpy, the walnuts and seasonings will not distribute evenly and the spread will be hard to spread on bread.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Almondfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, pepper, sherry, 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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