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Graham Sandwiches

A sandwich made with olives, parsley, celery, mayonnaise, mustard, and graham bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Graham Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the olives, parsley, and celery.

  2. Mix the chopped ingredients with mayonnaise, onion juice, and French mustard.

  3. Spread a thin layer of butter on slices of graham bread.

Assemble

  1. Add a layer of the olive mixture on one slice.

  2. Top with another slice of buttered bread and cut into strips or squares.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  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

What each ingredient does

Olives
Provide the main savory filling and briny flavour.
Mayonnaise
Binds the chopped filling together and keeps it moist.
Celery
Adds crisp texture to the soft olive filling.
Graham bread
Forms the thin slices that hold the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps keep the bread from soaking up moisture.

The step that matters

Chopping the filling finely and evenly. Uniform small pieces spread into a thin, even layer and bind well with mayonnaise, so each bite has balanced texture and the bread does not tear under coarse chunks.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, parsley, celery, mustard, bread, butter):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, parsley, celery, mustard, bread, 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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