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Nasturtium Sandwiches

A cold sandwich made with graham bread, butter, nasturtium leaves, minced hard‑boiled eggs, nasturtium seeds, horseradish, mustard, and garnished with nasturtium blooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Nasturtium Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Butter the slices of graham bread.

  2. Cover with crisp nasturtium leaves.

  3. Add a layer of finely minced hard boiled eggs and chopped nasturtium seeds.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt and spread lightly with mixed horseradish and mustard.

  5. Press down firmly with another layer of buttered bread.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut into triangles and make a small hole in the center.

  2. Insert the stem of a nasturtium bloom into the hole so the flower rests flat on the sandwich.

  3. Ensure all ingredients are cold and serve on a plate garnished with nasturtium leaves and blossoms.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Bread + mustardtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Graham bread
Provides the base layers that hold the filling together.
Butter
Adds richness and a moisture barrier against the bread.
Hard boiled eggs
Give a soft, creamy body to the filling.
Mixed horseradish
Adds sharp heat that contrasts with the rich eggs and butter.
Mustard
Adds tang and sharpness that brightens the filling.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Horseradishthe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, egg, mustard. 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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