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Chicken Sandwiches

A sandwich made with finely chopped cooked chicken mixed with butter, mustard, salt, pepper, and water, spread between bread slices.

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 ↓

Chicken Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the chicken very fine.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Mix the dry mustard into the butter.

  4. Combine the butter mixture with the chicken.

  5. If the mixture is stiff, add a little warm water to make a smooth paste.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the chicken mixture between slices of bread using a palette knife.

  2. Trim the edges of the sandwiches and arrange on a dish for serving.

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. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken
Forms the bulk of the filling, giving the sandwich its main texture and substance.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping bind the chicken into a spreadable mixture.
Dry mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Adding warm water to a stiff mixture. Chilled butter and chicken can stiffen and resist spreading. A little warm water softens the fat and loosens the mixture into a smooth paste, so it spreads evenly without tearing the bread.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, 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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