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Chicken Sandwiches

Chicken Sandwiches made with boiled chicken, seasoned, mashed, and spread on buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until very tender, seasoning with coarse sea salt.

  2. Reserve the cooking liquid and let it cool to form a jelly.

  3. Chop the chicken meat, removing skin, bone, and gristle, and mash it smooth.

Make the filling

  1. Season the chicken with pepper, salt, and celery salt, then moisten with butter and the chicken jelly.

  2. Spread the chicken mixture on thinly sliced buttered bread, then place two slices together.

  3. Cut the sandwiches into triangles.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  4. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main filling; cooking until very tender makes it easy to mash smooth.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and moistens the filling while coating the bread.
Chicken jelly
Adds moisture and savoury body to the filling as the reserved cooking liquid sets.
Bread
Forms the structure of the sandwich and holds the filling in place.

The step that matters

Reserve the cooking liquid and let it cool to form a jelly. The cooking liquid contains gelatin from the chicken, which sets as it cools. If it is not cooled fully, the jelly will not form and the filling will lack moisture and body.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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