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Lettuce Sandwiches

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 ↓

Lettuce Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash the lettuce thoroughly and chill it on ice for at least one hour.

  2. Cut the wheat bread into very thin slices.

  3. Spread butter on one side of each slice and mayonnaise on the other side, mixing in the rubbed garlic.

  4. Place a lettuce leaf between two slices of bread, pressing firmly.

  5. Cover the sandwiches with a damp napkin until ready to serve.

  6. Serve as soon as possible.

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. Lettuce + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together486 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Lettuce + wheattop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together105 recipes

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

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, wheat, bread, butter, garlic):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, wheat, bread, butter, garlic. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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