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Plain Cheese Sandwich

A sandwich made with buttered bread, cream cheese, and lettuce.

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 ↓

Plain Cheese Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Butter one side of each slice of bread.

  2. Lay thin slices of cream cheese on one slice to cover.

  3. Add a lettuce leaf on top of the cream cheese.

  4. Cover with the other slice of buttered bread, butter side down.

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 + cream cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,747 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Bread + cream cheesetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together166 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  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 creamy, rich filling that moistens the sandwich and adds tang.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and keeps the bread from soaking up moisture from the filling.
Bread
Forms the structure that holds the filling together.
Lettuce leaf
Adds a crisp, fresh texture that contrasts with the soft cheese.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, cream cheese. 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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