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Cucumber Sandwiches

A sandwich made with buttered wholemeal bread, cheese paste, cucumber slices, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Cucumber Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the wholemeal bread into thin slices.

  2. Spread a little butter on each slice.

Assemble

  1. Pound the Bon-Don cheese into a thick paste, adding pepper and salt.

  2. Spread the cheese mixture on the buttered bread.

  3. Place thin slices of cucumber on top and add another slice of buttered bread.

  4. Press down tightly with your palm.

Trim and serve

  1. Cut off the outer rough edges and crust.

  2. Cut into dice and serve on a clean doily.

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. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together344 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps keep the bread from soaking up moisture from the filling.
Bon-don cheese
Forms a thick, spreadable paste that adds savoury flavour and body to the sandwich.
Cucumber
Adds moisture and a fresh, cool crispness to the filling.
Wholemeal bread
Provides the sandwich base and structure, with a nutty, earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Press down tightly with your palm. Pressing firmly compacts the layers so the filling holds together when cut. Cucumber releases water over time, so a thin, even layer of butter and firm pressing help limit sogginess.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, cheese, 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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