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Danish Sandwiches

A cold sandwich made with pumpernickel, various meats, and optional condiments, served with celery stuffed with Roquefort cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and caviar work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 107 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Danish Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Spread a thick layer of butter on thin slices of pumpernickel.

  2. Remove the crusts from the pumpernickel.

Assemble the sandwiches

  1. Top with your choice of cold roast beef, veal, sardines, hard boiled eggs, chopped raw beef, cold lobster, caviar, or sturgeon.

  2. Add thin slices of cucumber or horseradish on the meats.

  3. For lobster, add a little mayonnaise.

  4. For caviar and chopped beef, add onion.

  5. Sprinkle a little paprika on top.

Serve

  1. Arrange the sandwiches on a large platter.

  2. Serve with celery stuffed with Roquefort cheese.

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 + caviartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together107 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Beef + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Egg + caviartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together101 recipes

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

  4. Caviar + cucumbertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together31 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Lobster + sturgeontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Forms a fatty layer that keeps the bread from soaking up moisture from the toppings.
Pumpernickel
Provides a dense, sturdy base that holds the toppings without going soggy.
Mayonnaise
Adds moisture and richness to the lobster topping.
Roquefort cheese
Adds sharp, salty flavor to the celery served alongside.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, beef, veal, egg, lobster, caviar, sturgeon):

  1. Onionfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef, veal, egg, lobster, caviar, sturgeon. 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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