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Madras Sandwiches

A sandwich made with mashed egg yolks, anchovy butter, chutney, butter, and spices spread between bread slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Madras Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Pound the egg yolks, chutney, anchovy paste, butter, salt, and cayenne together in a mortar.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Assemble and cut

  1. Spread some of the mixture onto a slice of buttered bread.

  2. Top with another slice of bread and cut into fancy shapes.

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. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  3. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Form the creamy, smooth body of the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the filling spread and stay soft.
Chutney
Adds sweetness and acidity to balance the savoury filling.
Anchovy butter or sandwich rolls paste
Adds a salty, savoury depth to the filling.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a fine sieve. Pressing the filling through a fine sieve breaks up any lumps and fibres, giving the smooth, even texture the sandwich needs. Skipping this leaves a grainy spread that tears the thin bread.

“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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