Skip to main content
Main

Cuban Sandwich

A sandwich with bread, lettuce, cheese, dill pickles, and optional salad dressing or salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lettuce and dill match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 159 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cuban Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place lettuce on one slice of bread.

  2. Add a little salad dressing or sprinkle of salt on the lettuce.

  3. Layer a slice of cheese on top of the lettuce.

  4. Finish with thin slices of dill pickles or a little chopped pickle.

  5. Top with the second slice of bread.

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. Lettuce + dilltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together159 recipes

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

  2. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Bread + lettucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Lettuce + cheesetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together614 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + dilltop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together157 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Provides the outer structure that holds the fillings together.
Cheese
Melts and adds richness and savory flavor that binds the layers.
Dill pickles
Adds acidity and a sharp, crisp contrast to the richer fillings.

Swap the dill

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, lettuce, cheese):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Dillthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, lettuce, cheese. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes