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Cheese Sandwiches

A spread made from cream cheese, walnuts, cayenne pepper, salt, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream cheese and walnut work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 439 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Cheese Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix the cream cheese and chopped walnuts until well combined.

  2. Add a pinch of cayenne pepper and ¼ teaspoon of salt.

  3. Moisten the mixture with cream to achieve a spreadable consistency.

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. Cream cheese + walnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together439 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Cream cheese + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Walnut + creamtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Cream cheese
Forms the creamy, smooth base that gives the spread its body and tang.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a little richness from their natural oils.
Cream
Adds moisture so the thick cream cheese loosens into a spreadable texture.

The step that matters

Moistening with cream. Cream cheese stiffens when cold and thins quickly with liquid. Adding cream a little at a time lets you stop once the mixture spreads easily, since too much makes it runny.

“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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