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Butternut Sandwiches

A sandwich made with bread, lemon dressing, chopped butternut, nut cream, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Butternut Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble the sandwiches

  1. Spread salad dressing on slices of bread.

  2. Sprinkle chopped butternut on top.

  3. Place two slices together and cut into desired shapes.

Make the dressing

  1. To make the dressing, boil lemon juice, sugar, and salt.

  2. Beat the egg white and yolk separately, then mix them.

  3. Pour the boiling mixture over the egg mixture while whipping.

  4. Heat in a double boiler, stirring until creamy.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Slices of bread
Forms the base and outer layers that hold the filling together.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and tang that gives the dressing its sharp flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Nut cream
Adds richness and body to the dressing.
Egg
Egg proteins thicken the dressing as it heats, giving it a creamy set.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling mixture over the egg mixture while whipping. Adding hot liquid slowly while whisking gently warms the egg so it thickens smoothly instead of scrambling. Pouring too fast or without whisking can cook the egg into lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, cream, egg. 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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