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Fruit Sandwiches

Fruit sandwiches made with whole-wheat or Graham bread, whipped cream, fruit jam, optional figs, prunes, bananas, eggs, celery, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 104 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Fruit Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Spread slices of light whole-wheat or Graham bread with whipped cream.

  2. Add a layer of fresh fruit jam on top.

  3. Optionally, add fig sauce or chopped steamed figs, steamed prunes, or sliced bananas.

  4. For an egg sandwich, substitute fruit with chopped hard-boiled yolks and a little finely chopped celery, seasoned lightly with coarse sea salt.

  5. Assemble sandwiches just before serving.

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. Fig + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Wheat + figtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together70 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Wheat + celerytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Wheat + bananatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Fig + celerytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Whipped cream
Adds moisture and a soft, creamy layer that keeps the bread from tasting dry.
Fresh fruit jam
Provides sweetness and fruity flavour that carries the sandwich.
Hard-boiled eggs
Give the savoury egg variant a firm, rich filling in place of the fruit.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, cream, fig, banana, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, cream, fig, banana, egg. 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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