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Nut and Cream Cheese Sandwiches

A sandwich made with Boston brown bread, butter, cream cheese, and chopped walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Nut and Cream Cheese Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter the Boston brown bread and cut it into very thin slices.

  2. In a bowl, mix the cream cheese and chopped walnut meats until well combined.

Assemble and cut

  1. Spread the cream cheese mixture on one slice of bread.

  2. Press another buttered slice of bread on top.

  3. Cut the sandwiches into fingers, rounds, or half-moons.

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 + cream cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,747 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Walnut + cream cheesetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together439 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

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

  5. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 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

Cream cheese
Provides a creamy, moist filling that binds the sandwich together.
Walnut meats
Add crunch and a nutty flavor that contrasts with the soft filling.
Boston brown bread
Its soft, slightly sweet crumb forms the base and holds the filling.
Butter
Coats the bread slices to add richness and keep them from soaking up moisture.

The step that matters

Cutting very thin slices of bread. Thin slices keep the bread soft and the filling in proportion, so the sandwich bites cleanly and does not become dense or soggy.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Peanutfits about as well
  4. Almondfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, meat, cream 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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