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Ribbon Sandwiches

A layered sandwich made with celery, green peppers, Neufchâtel cheese, pimentos, onion, mayonnaise, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Ribbon Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fillings

  1. Grind the celery and green peppers.

  2. Add the Neufchâtel cheese and season with salt and pepper.

  3. In a separate bowl, grind the pimentos and onion, then mix with enough mayonnaise to make thin.

Assemble and slice

  1. Remove the crusts from the bread and cut it into ¾ inch thick slices.

  2. Layer the pimento mixture on a slice of bread, add another slice, then layer the pepper mixture.

  3. Repeat until you have 5 layers of bread.

  4. Slice the sandwich as you would a layer cake.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Neufchâtel cheese
Provides a soft, creamy base that binds the filling and keeps it moist.
Mayonnaise
Thins the pimento mixture and adds fat and moisture to the filling.
Bread
Forms the stacked layers that hold the fillings together.
Green peppers
Add crisp texture and a fresh, slightly bitter flavour to the filling.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, celery, cheese, 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.

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