Skip to main content
Main

Tomato and Sardine Sandwiches

A sandwich of mashed sardines with butter, pepper, and salt, topped with sliced tomatoes, lemon juice, powdered sugar, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tomato and Sardine Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skin and bones from the sardines.

  2. Mash the sardines with butter, pepper, and salt.

  3. Skin the tomatoes.

  4. Thinly slice the tomatoes.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread a layer of the sardine mixture on a slice of buttered bread.

  2. Top the sandwich with sliced tomatoes.

  3. Squeeze a little lemon juice over the tomatoes.

  4. Sprinkle the sandwich with powdered sugar.

  5. Add another slice of buttered bread on top.

  6. Press the sandwich down firmly.

  7. Cut the sandwich into neat shapes.

  8. Serve on a napkin, garnished with parsley.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines
Provide the main savoury filling and rich, oily flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the mashed sardines spread and bind.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that cut through the richness of the sardines.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity that balances the oily fish and sweet notes.
Bread
Provides the structure that holds the filling and buttered layers together.

The step that matters

Press the sandwich down firmly. Pressing compresses the layers so the filling and tomato sit together and the sandwich holds its shape when cut. Pressing too lightly leaves gaps and slippage, while pressing too hard can squeeze out the moist filling and make the bread soggy.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes