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Picnic Sandwiches

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Picnic Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut thin slices from the roast leg of lamb.

  2. Chop the slices into small bits.

  3. Spread butter on slices of fresh bread.

  4. Spread thick mint sauce on corresponding slices.

  5. Put the two slices together to form a 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Lamb + minttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together772 recipes

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

  3. Lamb + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Bread + minttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together244 recipes

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the mint

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, bread, butter, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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