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Tomato Sandwiches

A sandwich made with buttered bread, tomato paste, mustard, pepper, salt, and optional meat extract or tomato slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Tomato Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Butter both slices of bread.

  2. Spread a thin layer of tomato paste on one slice. Add a little mustard, pepper, and salt.

  3. Press the other slice of bread on top.

  4. Remove the crusts and cut into neat pieces.

  5. Mix a little meat extract with the tomato paste for extra flavor.

  6. Alternatively, use slices of skinned ripe tomatoes instead of tomato paste.

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

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Tomato + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,482 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomato paste
Provides concentrated tomato flavor and moisture that seasons the bread.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps keep the bread from soaking up the filling.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the sweetness of the tomato.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, mustard, pepper, meat):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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