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Very Nice Sandwiches

A sandwich made with cold boiled tongue, oysters or chicken, mayonnaise, celery salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Very Nice Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the cold boiled tongue and oysters (or chicken) very finely until indistinguishable.

  2. Mix in celery salt, cayenne pepper, and mayonnaise until well combined.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread butter on thin slices of bread.

  2. Spread the mixture on the buttered bread just before serving.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

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

  5. Celery + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,110 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled tongue
Provides the main meaty filling and bulk of the sandwich.
Mayonnaise
Binds the chopped filling together and adds moisture and richness.
Butter
Coats the bread so it stays less soggy against the moist filling.

The step that matters

Chop the filling very finely. Fine chopping spreads the meat and oysters evenly so the filling holds together and spreads smoothly on the bread. Coarse pieces make the sandwich hard to bite and uneven in flavour.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, pepper, 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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