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Savoury Sandwich

A sandwich filled with a tomato and egg mixture seasoned with sugar, cayenne, and nut butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Savoury Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato filling

  1. Mash the tomatoes with a wooden spoon.

  2. Rub in the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Add sugar, cayenne pepper, and chopped egg whites.

  4. Heat olive oil or coconut butter in a saucepan.

  5. Pour in the mixture and heat until hot.

  6. Add flour mixed with a little cold water and boil until thickened.

  7. Set aside to cool.

Assemble the sandwich

  1. Spread nut butter on slices of brown bread.

  2. Place the mixture between the slices.

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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and sharp, fresh flavor of the filling.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Enrich the filling with fat and a smooth, creamy texture.
Hard-boiled egg whites
Add chopped bulk and a firm, mild texture to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the mixture as it boils so the filling holds together.

The step that matters

Boil the flour mixture until thickened. Flour only thickens fully once it reaches a boil and its starch swells. Stopping early leaves the filling runny, so it will soak into the bread.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, pepper, olive, flour, bread, butter. 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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