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Ribbon Sandwiches

A sandwich made by cutting white and brown bread into ribbons, buttered, optionally filled with cheese, pimento, green pepper, nuts, olives, gherkins, and salad dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Ribbon Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut one 3/4-inch slice of white bread and two slices of brown bread.

  2. Spread butter on both sides of the white bread.

  3. Press the slices together, placing the white bread slice in the center.

  4. Cut the sandwich into thin slices.

  5. Add optional ingredients such as cheese, pimento, green pepper, nuts, olives, and gherkins.

  6. Finely chop the optional ingredients and moisten them with salad dressing.

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. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Bread + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Spread on the bread to add richness and help keep the slices from drying out.
Salad dressing
Moistens the chopped optional fillings, adding moisture and tang to the sandwich.

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, cheese, pepper, olive):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Lima beansfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, cheese, pepper, olive. 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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