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Nut Sandwiches

A sandwich made with Boston brown bread, butter, and chopped walnuts or almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Nut Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Spread very thin butter on slices of Boston brown bread.

  2. Top with chopped walnuts, chopped almonds, or a mixture of both.

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 + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Bread + almondtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together858 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

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

What each ingredient does

Boston brown bread
Provides the soft, slightly sweet base that holds the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture so the bread does not soak up the nut topping and go dry.
Chopped walnuts
Add crunch and a rich, slightly bitter flavour against the sweet bread.
Chopped almonds
Add crunch and a mild, sweet nuttiness to the filling.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Brazil nutfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, almond. 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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