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Devilled Sandwich

A sandwich filled with finely chopped boiled tongue mixed with olive oil, red pepper, Worcestershire sauce, paprika, and sieved hard‑boiled egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Devilled Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the cold boiled tongue very fine.

  2. In a bowl, mix the chopped tongue with olive oil, red pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and paprika.

  3. Press the hard boiled egg yolks through a sieve and add to the mixture.

Assemble

  1. Spread the mixture between thin slices of buttered bread.

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

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

  2. Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled tongue
Provides the main meaty body and savory bulk of the filling.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a crumbly, creamy texture when pressed through a sieve.
Olive oil
Adds fat and moisture, helping the filling spread smoothly.
Worcestershire sauce
Contributes acidity and savory depth to the filling.

The step that matters

Press the egg yolks through a sieve. Pressing the yolks breaks them into fine, even crumbs that blend smoothly with the oil and meat. Unpressed lumps would leave the filling grainy and uneven when spread.

“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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