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Cottage or Cream Cheese Sandwiches

A sandwich made with rye or black bread, cream cheese, and optional apples, olives, lettuce, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and lettuce share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 23 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cottage or Cream Cheese Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Spread cream cheese on thin slices of rye or black bread.

  2. Top with slices of apples or olives.

  3. Add lettuce and mayonnaise dressing if desired.

  4. Close the sandwich and serve.

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. Rye + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together23 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Apple + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Rye + appletop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Cream cheese + appletop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Cream cheese + lettucetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 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

Cream cheese
Provides a soft, creamy spread that moistens the bread and binds the filling.
Rye or black bread
Supplies the sturdy base that holds the spread and toppings together.
Apples or olives
Adds a crisp or briny topping that contrasts with the rich cream cheese.

Swap the lettuce

The recipe marks lettuce as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rye, cream cheese, apple):

  1. Beetrootfits about as well
  2. Lettucethe original
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rye, cream cheese, apple. 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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