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A Popular Sandwich

A sandwich with toasted bread, bacon, lettuce, mayonnaise, and sliced cold chicken.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

A Popular Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut bread into ½ inch thick slices and remove crusts.

  2. Toast half of the slices delicately and butter them lightly.

  3. Broil the bacon until crispy.

Assemble and serve

  1. On plain bread, layer bacon, lettuce, mayonnaise, and sliced chicken.

  2. Top with a toasted slice of bread.

  3. Serve on lettuce leaves or a doily.

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. Bread + chickentop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  3. Bread + lettucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Lettuce + chickentop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,421 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Adds salty, savory fat and crisp texture to the sandwich.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture that keeps the chicken and bread from drying out.
Sliced cold chicken
Provides the main protein and bulk of the sandwich filling.
Bread
Forms the structure that holds the filling together.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, chicken, 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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