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Bloater Sandwiches

A sandwich made with bloaters, butter, pepper, salt, and watercress butter on bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Bloater Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bloaters

  1. Grill or fry the bloaters until cooked.

  2. Remove all skin and bones, then chop finely.

  3. If available, pound in a mortar until smooth; otherwise, beat well.

  4. Add butter until a soft, smooth paste forms.

  5. Pass through a wire sieve and season to taste.

Assemble and cut

  1. Spread the mixture on thin slices of bread.

  2. Cover with bread coated thickly with watercress-butter.

  3. Trim away the crusts and cut into circles, squares, or triangles.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Bread + watercresstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Bloaters
Provide the main flavour and the soft, fish-based filling of the sandwich.
Butter
Adds richness and, when worked in, turns the fish into a soft, spreadable paste.
Watercress-butter
Adds moisture and a fresh, peppery flavour to the bread covering the filling.

The step that matters

Pass through a wire sieve. Pounding or beating alone leaves fibres and lumps in the fish. Sieving breaks them down further, giving the smooth, even paste that spreads well and makes the sandwich pleasant to eat.

“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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