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Sardine Sandwiches

A sandwich made with canned sardines, buttered bread, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Sardine Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Open the can of sardines and remove the skin and bones.

Assemble

  1. Lay bits of sardine on one slice of well-buttered bread.

  2. Squeeze lemon juice over the sardines.

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

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

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines
Provide the main protein and rich, savoury flavour of the sandwich filling.
Bread
Gives structure to hold the filling and a soft texture to bite through.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and keeps the bread from soaking up the filling's moisture.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the oily flavour of the sardines.

The step that matters

Buttering the bread well. A thick, even layer of butter coats the bread and acts as a moisture barrier, so the lemon juice and sardine oils do not make the slices soggy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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