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Nut Sandwiches

A sandwich made with walnuts, mayonnaise, cayenne pepper, and buttered bread, garnished with cress or parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Nut Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Moisten the chopped walnuts with mayonnaise.

  2. Spread the mixture thickly on buttered bread.

  3. Sprinkle lightly with cayenne pepper.

  4. Top with another slice of buttered bread.

  5. Trim off the crusts and cut into triangles.

  6. Serve garnished with cress or parsley.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 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

Walnuts
Provide the crunchy, chopped filling that gives the sandwich its body.
Mayonnaise
Moistens the chopped nuts and binds them into a spreadable filling.
Butter
Coats the bread to add richness and keep it from soaking up the filling.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chickpeafits about as well
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, bread, butter, parsley. 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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