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Delmonico Reception Sandwiches

A cold sandwich made with finely chopped ham and beef tongue mixed with butter, mustard or curry, spread on bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Delmonico Reception Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop and mince the ham and beef tongue very finely.

  2. Season with ground cloves and black pepper.

  3. Blend the softened butter with mustard or curry powder and the minced meats into a paste.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut the bread into thin slices and spread each slice liberally with the meat paste.

  2. Cut off the crusts to make perfect squares, then cut each square diagonally into four triangles.

  3. Arrange the sandwiches in fancy pyramidal forms on a serving dish.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled ham
Provides the main savory meat flavor and body of the filling.
Boiled beef tongue
Adds rich, meaty texture to the paste once finely minced.
Unsalted butter
Binds the minced meats into a spreadable paste and adds richness and moisture.
Dry mustard or curry powder
Adds sharp, aromatic flavor that contrasts with the rich butter and meat.

The step that matters

Blend the softened butter with the minced meats into a paste. Butter must be softened so it blends evenly with the finely minced meat. If it is cold or unevenly mixed, the paste stays lumpy and spreads unevenly across the bread.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, beef, pepper, butter, mustard, 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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