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Sandwiches

A sandwich made with buttered bread, cold meat, mustard, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Spread butter on slices of bread.

  2. Chop the cold meat, mixing fat and lean if possible.

  3. Season the meat with mustard, pepper, and salt to taste.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the chopped meat between two slices of buttered bread, buttered side facing the meat.

  2. Press the sandwiches together, trim the edges, and cut into neat squares.

  3. Serve on a folded napkin for easy lifting.

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

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

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Meat + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  5. Bread + mustardtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a moist layer that keeps the bread from soaking up the filling.
Cold meat
Forms the main filling; mixing fat and lean adds moisture and a more tender bite.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavour that cuts through the richness of the meat and butter.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, meat, 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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