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Egg Sandwiches

A sandwich made with mashed hard‑boiled eggs, butter, vinegar, and salt, served on buttered bread and garnished with parsley.

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 ↓

Egg Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the eggs hard, then remove the yolks and mash them until soft.

  2. Add melted butter, vinegar, and salt to the mashed yolks and mix well.

  3. Chop the egg whites finely and combine with the yolk mixture.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut thin slices of bread and spread butter evenly on each slice.

  2. Spread the egg mixture on the buttered bread slices.

  3. Cut the sandwiches into fancy shapes and serve on a platter with parsley.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the main filling, with yolks mashed smooth and whites chopped for texture.
Melted butter
Adds richness and moisture to the mashed yolks, making the filling smooth and spreadable.
Vinegar
Adds a light acidity that brightens the rich egg yolk filling.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, vinegar, 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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