Skip to main content
Main

Noisette Sandwiches

A walnut bread sandwich spread with butter and orange marmalade.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Walnut and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 246 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Noisette Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Scald the milk and add the boiling water.

  2. When lukewarm, dissolve the yeast cake in the lukewarm water.

  3. Mix in the shortening, molasses, walnut meat, white flour, and enough whole wheat flour to knead.

  4. Knead the dough and bake as you would ordinary bread.

Rest and assemble

  1. Let the bread stand for 24 hours.

  2. Cut the bread into thin slices.

  3. Spread softened butter on one slice, then add orange marmalade, and cover with another slice of buttered 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. Walnut + wheattop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together246 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Yeast cake
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light.
Walnut meat
Adds crunch and nutty flavor throughout the loaf.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and moisture to the crumb.
Whole wheat flour
Provides the main structure and a heartier, nutty texture.
Orange marmalade
Adds sweet, bright citrus flavor and moisture between the slices.

The step that matters

Let the bread stand for 24 hours. Resting lets the crumb firm up and the flavors mellow, so thin slices hold together without crumbling and the bread tastes more developed.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, molasses, walnut, meat, flour, wheat, butter):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses, walnut, meat, flour, wheat, butter. 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

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipesMeat CakesMeat Cakes35 recipes