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Sandwiches

A simple sandwich made with bread or toast, butter, and various fillings such as meat, fish, eggs, cheese, or marmalade.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Choose slices of bread of the same size and thickness with a close, uniform texture.

  2. Spread the inner surface of each slice with butter, adding mustard and salt if desired.

Fill and assemble

  1. Chop the meat, ham, chicken, or tongue and veal together, or use thin slices of one kind of meat.

  2. If using fish, chop it small and mix with cream, pepper, and salt before spreading.

  3. Cover the buttered surface with the meat or filling.

  4. For cheese sandwiches, use grated cheese and plain thin biscuits.

  5. For sweet sandwiches, use marmalade.

  6. Lay another slice of bread or biscuit on top and press tightly together.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Bread + fishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Meat + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Provides the structure that holds the filling together and a soft, even texture when pressed.
Butter
Adds fat that coats the bread, adding richness and keeping the filling from soaking into the slices.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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

More sandwich recipes

Ham 75Cheese 60Sardine 59Club 41Egg 36Chicken 34 See all 4 →

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