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To Cut Sandwiches

A sandwich made with buttered bread, thin slices of meat or potted meat, and optional mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

To Cut Sandwiches

five or six sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter the loaf of bread and cut it into thin slices.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place thin slices of meat or potted meat on one slice.

  2. Add a little mustard if using beef or ham.

  3. Top with another buttered slice of bread and trim the crusts.

  4. Cut into five or six sandwiches and keep moist between plates or in a sandwich box.

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. Meat + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  4. Bread + mustardtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the structure that holds the filling and the sandwich together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps keep the bread from soaking up moisture from the filling.
Thin slices of meat
Provides the savory, protein-rich filling that forms the main body of the sandwich.
Potted meat
Gives a spreadable, concentrated meat filling that adds savory flavor and moisture.

The step that matters

Keep moist between plates or in a sandwich box. Thin bread slices dry out quickly once cut, and the cut surfaces lose moisture to the air. Keeping them covered slows drying and keeps the texture soft.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, meat. 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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