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Bread

Sandwiches

A collection of bread sandwiches with various fillings such as lettuce, eggs, sardines, ham, relish, and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Cut the bread into thin slices, crusts can remain.

  2. Cream the butter until very soft and spread it on the bread slices.

Make the fillings

  1. For lettuce sandwiches, shred lettuce, place on buttered bread, dot with salad dressing, cover with another slice, trim edges, and cut in half.

  2. For egg sandwiches, chop cold hard boiled eggs, moisten with salad dressing, and spread between buttered bread slices.

  3. For sardine sandwiches, drain sardines, remove skin and bones, mash with yolks of hard boiled eggs, season, and spread between buttered bread.

  4. For ham sandwiches, mince cold boiled ham, moisten with salad dressing or melted butter, and spread between buttered bread.

  5. For relish sandwiches, chop olives, pickles, and walnuts, moisten with salad dressing, and spread between buttered bread.

  6. For brown bread sandwiches, mash neufchatel cheese, add chopped olives, and spread between slices of brown bread.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Provides the structure that holds the fillings together.
Butter
Softened butter spreads evenly and forms a moisture barrier against wet fillings.
Salad dressing
Moistens the fillings, adding richness and tang.
Hard boiled eggs
Provide a creamy, soft texture and body to the egg and sardine fillings.
Neufchatel cheese
Creamy base that binds the brown bread filling and adds mild tang.

The step that matters

Cream the butter until very soft. Butter that is only cool or firm tears the bread and spreads unevenly. Softened butter spreads smoothly, coats the slice fully, and helps keep moist fillings from soaking through.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

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