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Meat Sandwiches

A sandwich made with bread, butter or mayonnaise, lettuce, and various cooked meats such as chicken, ham, and liver.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Meat Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Spread butter or mayonnaise on the bread.

  2. Mix chopped chicken and celery with mayonnaise or fresh dressing.

  3. Season thinly sliced meat with salt, pepper, and mustard if using ham.

  4. Spread the seasoned meat with mayonnaise or French dressing.

  5. Chop or pound meats to a paste.

  6. Mix the paste with mashed hard-boiled eggs, cream, salt, pepper, and onion juice if desired.

  7. Combine chopped ham with mustard, cream or mayonnaise, and chopped pickles or olives.

  8. Finely chop cooked chicken livers with a thin slice of onion, a few peppercorns, and salt.

  9. Mix the chopped livers with cream or mayonnaise.

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. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Provides the base that holds the filling and soaks up moisture from the spread.
Butter or mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture, and forms a barrier that keeps the bread from soaking through.
Cooked chicken
Supplies the main meaty texture and savoury flavour of the filling.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a soft, creamy texture when mashed into the filling.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the filling a smoother, softer texture.
Cooked chicken livers
Contribute a rich, deep flavour and a smooth, spreadable texture when chopped fine.

The step that matters

Chop or pound meats to a paste.. If the meat is left in coarse pieces, the filling will not spread evenly or hold together in the sandwich. Fine, uniform chopping lets the fat and moisture from the dressing bind the meat into a smooth filling.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, lettuce, chicken, celery, pepper, ham):

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Tomatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, lettuce, chicken, celery, pepper, ham. 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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