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Pimento and Cheese Sandwiches

A sandwich made with a mixture of pimentos, walnuts, cream cheese, and mayonnaise spread between buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pimento and Cheese Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop together the pimentos, walnuts, and cream cheese.

  2. Add the mayonnaise and mix well.

  3. Spread the mixture thickly between thin slices 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cream cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,747 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Walnut + cream cheesetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together439 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cream cheese + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together166 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream cheese
Provides creamy body and moisture that binds the filling together.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the filling smooth and spreadable.
English walnuts
Add crunch and texture contrast to the soft cheese filling.
Pimentos
Add sweet, mild flavor and moisture to the filling.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Almondfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream cheese, bread, 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.

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