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Egg Sandwiches

Egg sandwiches made with boiled eggs mashed with butter, seasoned, spread on buttered bread, then sliced and garnished with parsley.

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

Egg Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil the eggs for 10 minutes, then cool and remove the shells.

  2. Mash the yolks and whites with the butter until smooth.

  3. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the egg mixture on slices of buttered bread.

  2. Press the slices together.

  3. Trim the edges.

  4. Cut into neat pieces.

  5. Serve on a napkin.

  6. Garnish with parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide the main filling, setting firm when boiled and binding when mashed.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth texture to the mashed egg filling.
Bread
Forms the structure that holds the filling and is buttered to keep it from soaking through.

The step that matters

Mash the yolks and whites with the butter until smooth. Mashing the cooked eggs thoroughly while they are still fairly warm helps the butter blend in evenly, giving a smooth spread rather than lumpy pieces of egg that tear the bread.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Sagefits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

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