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Bread

Sweet Sandwiches

A sweet spread made from beaten eggs, sugar, butter, flour, and Cook's Friend, used on bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Sandwiches

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the eggs, sugar, and butter together until very light.

  2. Add the flour mixed with Cook's Friend and combine well.

  3. Spread the mixture onto bread or use as desired.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness, and help trap air when beaten into the batter.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and, when beaten with butter, helps create a light texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture, and holds air when beaten.
Flour
Gives the mixture body and structure as it combines with the eggs and butter.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs, sugar, and butter until very light. Beating creams the butter with the sugar and incorporates air into the eggs, which gives the mixture its light, airy texture. Under-beating leaves it dense, while the flour should be folded in gently afterward so the air is not knocked out.

“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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