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Meat Sandwiches

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Meat Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Spread the bread with butter or mayonnaise.

  2. Mix the meat with mayonnaise if desired.

  3. Add a crisp lettuce leaf or watercress with the meat.

  4. Chop chicken and celery together, then mix with mayonnaise or fresh dressing.

  5. Season thinly sliced meat with salt, pepper, and mustard if using ham.

  6. Spread with mayonnaise or French dressing if liked.

  7. Chop or pound meat to a paste, mix with mashed hard-boiled eggs and a little cream, then season with salt, pepper, and onion juice if desired.

  8. Mix chopped ham with mustard, cream or mayonnaise, and chopped pickles or olives.

  9. Cook chickens' livers until tender with a thin slice of onion, a few peppercorns, and salt, then chop finely and mix with cream or mayonnaise.

  10. Add chopped olives or pickles for improvement.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, lettuce, chicken, celery, pepper, egg):

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Spinachfits about as well

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

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