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Cheese Sandwiches

A sandwich made with grated cheese mixed with anchovy essence, butter, salt, pepper, and cayenne, spread between buttered bread slices.

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

Cheese Sandwiches

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese paste

  1. Grate the cheese finely.

  2. Pound or work the cheese until smooth with a little salt, pepper, cayenne, and anchovy essence or paste.

  3. Add enough butter to form a soft paste.

Assemble and cut

  1. Prepare thin slices of bread and butter them.

  2. Spread the cheese mixture on half of the buttered bread slices.

  3. Cover with the remaining slices. Press well. Trim.

  4. Cut into desired shapes.

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. Cheddar cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,436 recipes

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

  3. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Bread + peppertop 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

Cheshire or cheddar cheese
Provides the main flavour and the body of the filling.
Butter
Binds the cheese into a soft paste and keeps the filling moist.
Anchovy essence or paste
Adds a salty, savoury depth to the cheese filling.
White or brown bread
Forms the structure that holds the filling and gives each sandwich its shape.

The step that matters

Add enough butter to form a soft paste. Too little butter leaves the grated cheese crumbly and hard to spread, while too much makes the filling greasy and loose. The cheese should be worked until smooth so it holds together between the slices.

“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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