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Lettuce Sandwiches

A sandwich made with thin bread, butter, lettuce leaves, stuffed olives, and thick mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Lettuce Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Spread butter on one slice of thin bread.

  2. Layer lettuce leaves on the buttered slice.

  3. Add slices of stuffed olives on top of the lettuce.

  4. Spread a thick layer of mayonnaise over the olives.

  5. Gently press a second slice of bread on top.

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 + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Butter + olivetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,887 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Thin bread
Provides the soft structure that holds the filling together in each bite.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creates a barrier that keeps moisture from soaking into the bread.
Lettuce leaves
Adds crisp, fresh texture and a cool, watery crunch.
Stuffed olives
Contributes salty, briny flavour that contrasts with the mayonnaise.
Thick mayonnaise
Adds fat and creaminess, binding the filling and moistening the bread.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, 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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