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Savoury Sandwiches

A sandwich made with sardine paste, hard‑boiled egg, watercress, mustard, vinegar, salad oil, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 293 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Savoury Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sardine paste

  1. Remove the bones from the sardines and mash them into a paste with a knife.

  2. Mix the sardine paste with salad oil, vinegar, and mustard.

Assemble the sandwich

  1. Spread the sardine paste on slices of bread.

  2. If the paste is hard to spread, add a little hot butter.

  3. Spread the hard-boiled egg on the bread and season to taste.

  4. Finely chop the watercress and spread it on the bread, along with additional mustard, vinegar, and oil.

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. Watercress + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together293 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Watercress + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines
Provide the main savoury flavour and the rich body of the sandwich filling.
Butter
Adds fat and softness so the sardine paste spreads more easily.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds a firm, mild, creamy layer that contrasts with the paste.
Salad oil
Adds fat and moisture, loosening the paste and keeping it smooth.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, oily sardine flavour.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the fish and oil.

The step that matters

Mixing and adjusting the sardine paste. Fish paste is dense and oily, so it can turn stiff or hard to spread. Adding a little warm fat, such as hot butter, softens it, while vinegar and mustard balance the richness. Adjust gently so the paste stays spreadable without becoming greasy.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, watercress, vinegar, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, watercress, vinegar, egg. 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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