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The Girard Nut Sandwich

A sandwich made with thin bread, Gruyère cheese, fresh walnuts, sea salt, and butter, served with sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

The Girard Nut Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the crusts off the bread and lightly butter each slice.

  2. Place a very thin slice of Gruyère cheese on each slice of bread.

Assemble

  1. Peel enough fresh walnuts to cover the cheese and lay them on top.

  2. Sprinkle a little coarse sea salt over the walnuts.

  3. Add another thin slice of cheese on top of the walnuts.

  4. Top with another slice of buttered bread and press the slices together.

Serve

  1. Serve the sandwiches with fine sherry.

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. Butter + gruyere cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together323 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Bread + gruyere cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Bread + walnuttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together714 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown lightly and taste savoury.
Gruyere cheese
Melts-free filling that adds savoury, nutty flavour and holds the walnuts in place.
Fresh walnuts
Provide crunch and a nutty, slightly bitter flavour against the rich cheese.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Peasfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Lima beansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, gruyere cheese. 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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