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Sardine and Olive Sandwiches

A sandwich made with mashed sardines, butter, lemon juice, red pepper, and optional olives on buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sardine and Olive Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove skins and bones from the sardines and mash them into a paste.

  2. Mix the sardine paste with butter, lemon juice, and red pepper until smooth.

Assemble

  1. Butter the bread slices on one side and cut them into small triangles.

  2. Spread the sardine mixture on the buttered sides of the bread.

  3. Press the slices together lightly and arrange them on a dish.

  4. For variation, mix minced olives into the sardine paste before spreading.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

  4. Bread + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines
Provide the main savory flavour and a soft, spreadable body when mashed.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the sardine paste turn smooth and spreadable.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fishy flavour of the sardines.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, bread, olive. 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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