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Nut Sandwiches

A sandwich made with a mixture of chopped nuts, mashed hard‑boiled eggs, and mayonnaise, served on buttered bread with lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Nut Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Chop together the hickory nuts, walnuts, and pecans.

  2. Add the mashed hard boiled eggs to the chopped nuts.

  3. Mix the nut and egg mixture with mayonnaise dressing.

Assemble the sandwiches

  1. Spread the mixture between slices of buttered bread.

  2. Add a trimmed lettuce leaf to each sandwich.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Walnut + pecanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Nuts + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Nuts + pecanstop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together121 recipes

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

  5. Nuts + lettucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Hickory nuts
Provide the main crunchy texture and nutty flavour of the filling.
Walnuts
Add bulk, crunch and a slightly bitter nutty flavour to the filling.
Pecans
Add crunch and a rich, buttery nut flavour to the filling.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and softness, binding the chopped nuts into a spreadable filling.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds moisture and fat, binding the nuts and egg so the filling spreads easily.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, pecans, egg, butter, lettuce):

  1. Brazil nutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, pecans, egg, butter, lettuce. 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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