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Caviare Sandwiches

A sandwich made with caviar, butter, pepper, lemon juice, and watercress on brown bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Caviare Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Spread half the slices of bread with caviare.

  2. Season the caviare with a little pepper and squeeze over some lemon juice.

  3. Put the slices together and cut them into narrow fingers.

  4. Arrange the sandwiches in pairs, alternating directions.

  5. Fill the center with carefully picked watercress.

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. Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  4. Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Bread + watercresstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Caviare
Provides the main flavor and a salty, briny richness that defines the sandwich.
Brown bread
Supplies a sturdy base that holds the filling and contrasts with its soft interior.
Butter
Adds fat that coats the bread and keeps the filling from soaking through.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, salty caviare.

The step that matters

Spread the caviare evenly and season it lightly before assembling. Caviare is salty and delicate, so too much seasoning or uneven spreading can make one bite overpowering and another bland. Acid from lemon juice sharpens flavor, but excess liquid can soften the bread, so it should be used sparingly.

“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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