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Boston Sandwiches

A sandwich made with chestnut and chicken liver paste spread on thin white bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Boston Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the chestnuts and chicken livers until tender.

  2. Remove the brown skin from the chestnuts by pouring boiling water over them after shelling.

  3. Pound the chestnuts to a paste.

  4. Season the paste with salt, lemon juice, and pepper.

Assemble

  1. Spread the mixture on thin slices of white 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Chestnut + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together381 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Chestnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Chestnut + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together191 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Chestnuts
Form the main bulk of the paste, giving it body and a mild, starchy sweetness.
Chicken livers
Add richness and a deep, savoury flavour to the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich filling and balances its flavour.
Thin slices of white bread
Serve as the soft base that holds the spread.

The step that matters

Remove the brown skin from the chestnuts. Boiling water loosens the bitter, tannin-rich brown skin, which would otherwise make the paste taste astringent and gritty.

Swap the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, liver, lemon, pepper, bread):

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Peasfits about as well
  3. Chestnutthe original
  4. Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, liver, lemon, 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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