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Sandwiches a LA Chateaubriand

A sandwich filled with minced veal, ham, chicken, tongue, oysters or lobster, bound in a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sandwiches a LA Chateaubriand

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rolls

  1. Cut a round from the bottom of each roll, about half an inch from the edge, and set aside.

  2. Carefully scrape out the crumb from the rolls without breaking the crust.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, stir the flour over medium heat with the milk until thickened.

  2. Add the butter, stirring rapidly to prevent lumps, then season with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and parsley.

Fill and serve

  1. Once the sauce is cold, mix it with the minced meat and fill the rolls, replacing the round on top.

  2. Arrange the filled rolls on a serving dish for supper, luncheon, or high tea.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce that holds the filling together.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Milk, cream, or good white broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it moisture and body.
Cooked veal or ham
Provides savoury meaty flavour and bulk to the filling.
Cooked chicken and tongue
Adds more savoury meat flavour and texture to the filling.
Oysters or lobster
Contributes a distinct briny, seafood flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Adding the butter to the sauce. Flour thickened with milk forms lumps if it is not kept moving, and butter stirred in rapidly helps keep the sauce smooth. Lumps in a sauce cannot be fully removed once it has set, so constant stirring matters.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, chicken, oyster, flour, milk, butter, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, chicken, oyster, flour, milk, butter, pepper. 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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