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Ego Sandwiches

A sandwich made with boiled eggs, buttered bread, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and dry mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Ego Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs for 10 minutes, then transfer them to cold water.

  2. Peel the eggs and slice them.

Assemble the sandwiches

  1. Spread butter on slices of bread.

  2. Layer the egg slices between the buttered bread.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and dry mustard.

  4. Trim and cut the sandwiches into desired shapes.

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

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

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Mustard + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 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

Eggs
Form the main filling, providing richness and a soft, creamy texture when sliced.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the bread and helps keep it from soaking up moisture from the filling.
Dry mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor that cuts through the richness of the egg.

The step that matters

Boil the eggs for 10 minutes, then transfer them to cold water.. Boiling for the full time sets the yolks fully, and moving the eggs to cold water stops further cooking. This keeps the yolks from turning grey-green and makes the eggs easier to peel and slice cleanly.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, pepper, 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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