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Cheese Sandwich

A sandwich made with American cheese, butter, dry mustard, and tarragon vinegar spread on bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Cheese Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spread

  1. Pound the American cheese in a mortar with the butter and dry mustard until blended.

  2. Add a little tarragon vinegar to the mixture.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the cheese mixture on thin slices of bread.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  4. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

American cheese
Melts into a soft, spreadable base that carries the flavor of the sandwich.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the cheese mixture smooth and easy to spread.
Dry mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that balances the richness of the cheese and butter.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and a light herbal note that brightens the rich spread.

The step that matters

Pounding the cheese, butter and mustard until blended. Cold cheese and butter do not combine evenly on their own. Pounding them together until fully blended gives a smooth, uniform spread rather than lumps of cheese in greasy butter.

Swap the tarragon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, butter, mustard, vinegar, bread):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Tarragonthe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, mustard, vinegar, 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.

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