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Water Cress Sandwiches

A sandwich of watercress and finely chopped hard‑boiled eggs, seasoned with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Water Cress Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cress

  1. Wash the water cress.

  2. Dry the water cress in a clean cloth, pressing out all moisture.

  3. Cut the water cress into small pieces.

  4. Discard the stems.

Make the filling

  1. Chop the hard-boiled eggs finely.

  2. Mix the chopped eggs with the water cress.

  3. Season the mixture with coarse sea salt.

  4. Season the mixture with black pepper to taste.

  5. Add a few drops of lemon juice.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut thin slices of bread.

  2. Remove the crusts from the bread slices.

  3. Spread butter on each slice of bread.

  4. Place the cress mixture between the bread slices.

  5. Press down the slices.

  6. Serve.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Water cress
Adds a fresh, peppery flavour and bulk to the filling.
Hard boiled eggs
Provide the soft, creamy body that binds the filling.
Bread
Forms the structure that holds the filling together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps keep the bread from soaking up moisture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the filling.

The step that matters

Dry the watercress thoroughly. Excess water from wet leaves seeps into the bread and makes the sandwich soggy. Pressing the leaves dry in a cloth keeps the filling moist without making the bread wet.

“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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