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Vevay Sandwiches

A sandwich made with buttered bread, anchovy fillets, hard‑boiled egg, chopped chicken, parsley, capers, and aspic jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vevay Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Cut thin slices of brown bread.

  2. Spread butter on the slices.

  3. Sprinkle lightly with cayenne pepper.

  4. Place anchovy fillets flat on the buttered bread.

  5. Sprinkle hard-boiled egg, finely chopped cooked chicken, parsley, and capers over the anchovies.

  6. Top with another slice of buttered bread.

  7. Press down gently.

Cut and serve

  1. Cut the sandwiches into strips about 1 inch long.

  2. Arrange on a dish.

  3. Garnish the center with parsley and a little chopped aspic jelly.

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. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  4. Anchovy + caperstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Thin brown bread
Provides the base and structure that holds the sandwich layers together.
Butter
Coats the bread, adding richness and creating a barrier against moisture soaking in from the filling.
Anchovy fillets in oil
Adds a salty, savoury flavour that is the dominant taste of the sandwich.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds soft, creamy texture and mild richness to the filling.
Cooked chicken, finely chopped
Adds bulk and a mild, meaty body to the filling.
Capers, chopped
Adds sharp, acidic brightness that balances the richness of the egg and butter.

The step that matters

Press down gently. Pressing too hard squeezes the filling out of the sandwich, while too little pressure leaves the layers loose and hard to cut cleanly into strips.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Capersthe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper, anchovy, egg, chicken, 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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