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Boston Sandwiches

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Boston Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut thin slices of Boston brown bread into rounds or odd shapes.

  2. Spread cream cheese or Neufchatel cheese on half of the slices.

  3. Chop olives and pimentos, then mix with salad dressing.

  4. Spread the olive and pimento mixture on the remaining slices.

  5. Press the slices together with a leaf of crisp white lettuce between each sandwich.

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. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  2. Bread + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Cream cheese + olivetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Bread + cream cheesetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together166 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cream cheese, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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