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Sandwiches with Pastry

A pastry sandwich filled with minced chicken, ham, meat jelly, parsley, pepper, salt, and mayonnaise, served with cress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sandwiches with Pastry

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Mince the chicken and ham, then mix with the meat jelly, parsley, pepper, salt, and mayonnaise.

  3. Spread a portion of the mixture on six squares of puff pastry.

  4. Cover with the remaining squares and press to seal.

  5. Roll out any scraps of puff pastry very thin and cut into squares.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until golden, then serve on a dish with cress in the center.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Meat + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, crisp outer casing that puffs and browns in the oven.
Chicken
Provides the main savory filling and bulk of the mixture.
Ham
Adds salty, savory meaty flavor to the filling.
Meat jelly
Adds moisture and binds the minced meats into a cohesive filling.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the filling soft and creamy.

The step that matters

Pressing the pastry edges to seal. If the top and bottom squares are not sealed firmly, the filling can leak during baking and the pastry may not puff evenly. A tight seal keeps the moist filling contained while the fat in the pastry steams and lifts the layers.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits about as well
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, ham, pepper. 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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