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Savory Sandwich

A sandwich filled with a tomato and egg mixture thickened with flour and flavored with cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Savory Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mash the tomatoes finely with a wooden spoon.

  2. Rub in the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Add a pinch of sugar, a dash of cayenne pepper, and the chopped egg whites.

  4. Heat the olive oil or coconut butter in a stewpan.

  5. Pour in the mixture and heat until hot.

  6. Mix the flour with a little cold water to form a cream, then add it to the mixture.

  7. Boil until thickened, then set aside to cool.

Assemble the sandwich

  1. Spread nut butter on slices of brown bread and fill with the cooled mixture.

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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, moisture and tart flavour of the filling.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and give it a creamy, smooth texture.
Egg whites
Add chopped body and structure to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the mixture as it boils, giving it a spreadable body.
Olive oil or coconut butter
Fats that carry flavour and help cook the filling in the pan.

The step that matters

Boil until thickened. The flour mixture must be boiled so its starch swells and thickens the filling; without full boiling it stays thin and raw-tasting. Cooling before filling keeps the bread from going soggy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, pepper, olive, flour, bread, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, pepper, olive, flour, 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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