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Salad

Salad Sandwich

A sandwich filled with paste of boiled chicken and tongue mixed with celery salt, cayenne pepper, anchovy paste, and mayonnaise, served on lettuce and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salad Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a mortar, pound the chicken and tongue to a paste.

  2. Mix in celery salt, cayenne, anchovy paste, and mayonnaise.

  3. Set the mixture aside in a cold dish.

Assemble the sandwich

  1. Dip lettuce leaves in tarragon vinegar and shake off excess.

  2. Layer a lettuce leaf on a slice of bread.

  3. Spread the meat mixture on top.

  4. Add another lettuce leaf.

  5. Top with the second slice of bread.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together456 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Celery + lettucetop 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. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the main body of the filling, giving it savory bulk and a soft, spreadable texture when pounded.
Tongue
Adds rich, meaty flavor and a smooth, spreadable texture to the filling.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture, binding the pounded meat into a creamy spread.
Anchovy paste
Adds salty, savory depth that enhances the meat flavor.

The step that matters

Pounding the chicken and tongue to a paste. If the meat is left in coarse pieces, the filling will not spread evenly and will be less cohesive. Pounding breaks the fibers down so the mayonnaise can bind them into a smooth, uniform texture.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, anchovy, lettuce, tarragon, vinegar, bread):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, anchovy, lettuce, tarragon, vinegar, 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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