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Sandwich Hints

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and horseradish share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 79 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sandwich Hints

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Use stale, close-grained bread; avoid spongy new bread.

  2. Cut thin slices of bread and trim off the crust.

  3. For a chicken sandwich, layer finely chopped chicken or tongue with lettuce and mayonnaise.

  4. For a ham or beef sandwich, spread horseradish sauce on thin slices of meat.

  5. Prepare tomatoes by peeling and sprinkling with oil, coarse sea salt, pepper, vinegar, and chopped parsley.

  6. For a cream cheese sandwich, mix cream cheese with ground stuffed olives and mayonnaise, and spread between slices of bread.

  7. For a hard-boiled egg sandwich, grind eggs and mix with walnuts and mayonnaise, then spread between slices of bread.

  8. For a salmon sandwich, mix canned salmon with mayonnaise and place on a lettuce leaf between slices of bread.

  9. For a peanut sandwich, mix roasted peanuts with butter and salt, then spread between slices 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 + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together79 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

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

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

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, chicken, lettuce, sauce, ham, tomato, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, chicken, lettuce, sauce, ham, tomato, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.