Skip to main content
Main

Caviar Sandwiches

A sandwich made with caviar, salad dressing, onion, lemon juice, and dry thin bread slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,676 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Caviar Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the topping

  1. In a bowl, combine caviar, salad dressing, and chopped onion.

  2. Squeeze in the juice of half a lemon, making sure to remove any seeds.

Assemble

  1. Spread the mixture over dry thin slices of bread.

  2. Form sandwiches and cut them into finger shapes.

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. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  2. Caviar + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together65 recipes

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

  3. Onion + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Lemon + breadtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

  5. Caviar + oniontop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together46 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

Caviar
Provides the main briny, salty flavor and a pop of texture.
Salad dressing
Adds moisture and creaminess that binds the topping together.
Chopped onion
Adds a sharp, aromatic bite that cuts through the richness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Pumpkinfits better
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against caviar, onion, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes