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Mock Crab Sandwiches

A spread of grated cheese, olives, lemon juice, butter, and anchovy paste, used as a sandwich filling in place of crab.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Mock Crab Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the grated cheese, chopped olives, salt, lemon juice, paprika, creamed butter, mustard, and anchovy paste, and mix until well blended.

  2. Spread the mixture on slices of bread to make sandwiches.

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 + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated cheese
Melts into the filling and gives it body and savoury richness.
Creamed butter
Adds fat that makes the spread soft, smooth and easy to spread.
Anchovy paste
Adds concentrated savoury depth that stands in for the seafood flavour of crab.
Chopped olives
Adds salty, briny flavour and a bit of texture to the spread.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, olive, butter, mustard, anchovy):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Grapefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, olive, butter, mustard, anchovy. 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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