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Lettuce Sandwiches

A sandwich made with bread, butter, lettuce, and mayonnaise.

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 ↓

Lettuce Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut thin slices of bread.

  2. Lightly butter the bread slices.

Assemble

  1. Spread fresh, crisp lettuce leaves with mayonnaise dressing.

  2. Layer the lettuce between the slices of 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + lettucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Butter + lettucetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,287 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the structure that holds the filling together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps keep the bread from soaking up moisture.
Lettuce
Adds crisp texture and fresh moisture to the sandwich.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and creaminess and binds the lettuce to the bread.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter. 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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