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Piquant Sandwiches

A sandwich made with thinly sliced bread, butter, minced hard-boiled eggs, chopped green pickle, salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Piquant Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Cut the bread very thin.

  2. Lightly butter the bread.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the minced hard-boiled eggs with the chopped sharp green pickle.

  2. Season the mixture with salt and pepper.

  3. Work in a little butter.

Assemble and cut

  1. Spread the filling on a slice of bread.

  2. Place another buttered slice on top, buttered side down.

  3. Cut the sandwiches into squares and triangles.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the bulk and rich, creamy texture of the filling.
Sharp green pickle
Adds acidity and a sharp tang that cuts the richness of the eggs.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and keeps the bread from soaking up the filling's moisture.

The step that matters

Work in a little butter. Butter blended into the mashed egg and pickle mixture makes it smoother and richer. Too much or uneven mixing can make the filling greasy or soggy, so add it gradually and combine evenly.

“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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