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Royal Sandwiches

A sandwich made with boiled eggs, anchovy fillets, stale bread, butter, and small salad, cut into squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Royal Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs gently in water for 10 minutes.

  2. Transfer the eggs to a basin of cold water for 5 minutes.

Prepare the fillings

  1. Wash and wipe the anchovies, then remove heads, fins, and skin.

  2. Split the anchovies open and remove the fillets.

  3. Clean and dry the small salad.

Assemble and serve

  1. Butter the slices of bread and layer between each two slices: egg slices, small salad, and anchovy fillets.

  2. Press the sandwiches together, cut into small squares, and arrange on a dish.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide a soft, sliceable filling that adds richness and bulk to the sandwich.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury flavour that contrasts with the mild egg.
Brown bread
Forms the structure that holds the layered fillings together.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the bread and helps keep it from soaking up moisture from the fillings.

The step that matters

Boiling the eggs gently. Gentle simmering rather than a hard boil keeps the yolks tender and free of a grey-green ring, and the cold-water bath stops further cooking so the eggs slice cleanly.

“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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