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Sardine Sandwiches

A sandwich made with sardines, ham, paprika, mustard, ketchup, vinegar, and butter on bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Sardine Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Chop the sardines and mix with the chopped ham, paprika, mustard, ketchup, and enough vinegar to form a thick paste.

Assemble and cut

  1. Spread a thin layer of butter on a slice of bread, then add a layer of the sardine mixture.

  2. Top with another slice of buttered bread and repeat the layering with more sardine mixture and bread slices.

  3. Remove the crusts and cut the stacked sandwich into thick slices.

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. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,482 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines
Provide the main savory filling and rich, oily flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps keep the bread from soaking up moisture from the filling.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sardine flavour and helps bind the paste.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and a little heat that balances the oily fish.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, mustard, vinegar, butter, 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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