Skip to main content
Main

Lax Sandwiches

A sandwich made with lox, anchovies, smoked egg yolks, butter, and seasoned spread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Lax Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. In a mortar, combine the lox, anchovies, egg yolks, butter, and seasoning.

  2. Pound the mixture until smooth, then rub it through a fine sieve.

Assemble and cut

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

  2. Top with another slice of bread, press together, and cut into small fancy shapes.

  3. Optionally, use slices of lox instead of pounding.

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

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

  3. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Egg + salmontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + buttertop 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

Lox (in the method)
Provides the smoky, salty fish flavour that defines the sandwich filling.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Make the filling rich and creamy, giving it a smooth, spreadable body.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth texture and a rich mouthfeel in the spread.
Anchovies
Add a deep, salty savoury note that boosts the fish flavour.

The step that matters

Pound and sieve the mixture until smooth. Pounding breaks the lox, anchovies and yolks into a fine paste, and sieving removes fibres and lumps. A coarse filling would tear the thin bread and spread unevenly.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesSalmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes