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Tomato Sandwiches

A sandwich made with sliced tomatoes, buttered bread, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and lemon juice or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Tomato Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes and let them sit for 2 minutes.

  2. Drain the tomatoes and cover them with cold water until completely cooled.

  3. Dry the tomatoes.

  4. Remove the skins from the tomatoes.

  5. Slice the tomatoes thinly.

  6. Season the tomato slices with salt and pepper.

  7. Sprinkle the tomato slices with lemon juice or vinegar to taste.

Assemble and serve

  1. Prepare thin slices of buttered bread.

  2. Cut out rounds of suitable size from the bread.

  3. Place slices of tomato between two rounds of bread.

  4. Press the sandwich together firmly.

  5. Serve on a nicely arranged dish garnished with small salad or watercress.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe firm tomatoes
Provide the main filling, with juice and flavour that moisten the bread.
Creamed butter
Spread on the bread to add richness and a fat barrier against soggy slices.
White or brown bread
Forms the structure that holds the filling together.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Drying the tomatoes. Tomatoes release water once sliced, and excess moisture soaks into the bread and makes the sandwich soggy. Thorough drying before assembly keeps the bread intact.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

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

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