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Beetroot Sandwiches

A sandwich made with sliced beetroot, buttered bread, grated cheese, lettuce, endive, mustard cress, spring onions, and boiled egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and endive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Beetroot Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beetroot

  1. Cut the beetroot into thin slices.

  2. Spread butter on slices of bread and layer with beetroot and a little grated cheese.

Prepare the greens

  1. Wash the lettuce and endive leaves thoroughly to remove grit.

  2. Soak the washed leaves in a bowl of clean water to keep them crisp.

  3. Wash the mustard cress and peel the spring onions, cutting them into small pieces.

  4. Dry the lettuce, endive, mustard cress, and onions by shaking them in a clean cloth.

  5. Tear the endive and lettuce into small pieces and mix with mustard cress and onions in a bowl.

  6. Garnish the mixture with chopped boiled egg whites and beetroot.

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. Lettuce + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Beetroot + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Beetroot + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  5. Endive + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together121 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Beetroot
Provides the main colour and earthy sweetness of the sandwich filling.
Butter
Adds fat and a moist layer that keeps the bread from soaking up moisture from the filling.
Grated cheese
Adds richness and savoury flavour that balances the sweet beetroot.
Lettuce leaves
Adds crisp texture and freshness to the sandwich.

The step that matters

Dry the greens thoroughly. Leaves that stay wet dilute the filling and make the bread soggy, so they should be shaken dry in a cloth before mixing.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beetroot, bread, butter, cheese, lettuce, endive, mustard):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beetroot, bread, butter, cheese, lettuce, endive, mustard. 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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