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Coronation Sandwiches

A sandwich made with boiled plover eggs, cress, lettuce, salt, pepper, and buttered brown bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Coronation Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the plovers' eggs for 10 minutes, then drop them into cold water.

  2. Peel and mince the eggs finely with cress and lettuce, adding salt and pepper.

Assemble and serve

  1. Butter the slices of brown bread and spread a good layer of the mixture on top.

  2. Place another slice of brown bread on each sandwich and cut them into squares.

  3. Roll the sandwiches in grease-proof paper, seal the ends, and give a packet to each guest.

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. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lettuce + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Plovers' eggs
Form the main filling, binding into a soft, moist spread when minced.
Brown bread
Provides the base and top slices that hold the filling together.
Butter
Coats the bread, adding richness and keeping the filling from soaking into the slices.

The step that matters

Boil the plovers' eggs for 10 minutes, then drop them into cold water.. Boiling for the full time sets the yolks firm enough to mince cleanly. Plunging them into cold water stops the cooking, so the yolks do not keep turning grey-green at the edge.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, 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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