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Potted Meat for Sandwiches

A sandwich made with finely chopped cold cooked meat mixed with butter, mustard, pickles, mayonnaise, salt, pepper, and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potted Meat for Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cold cooked meat finely using a meat chopper.

  2. Add ¼ cup of butter, prepared mustard, salt, pepper, chopped pickles, and a little mayonnaise, then mix all ingredients to form a smooth paste.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the mixture between slices of bread, adding a lettuce leaf in between.

  2. Serve as 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. Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Meat + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 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 cooked meat
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the sandwich its substance.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture to the paste.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the meat and butter.
Chopped pickles
Add acidity and a crisp, tangy bite to the filling.
Mayonnaise
Adds moisture and helps bind the paste together smoothly.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucethe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Horseradishfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, mustard, pepper, 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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