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Cheese and Lettuce Sandwiches

A sandwich made with thinly sliced Boston brown bread, butter, Neufchatel or cottage cheese, lettuce, and French salad dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Cheese and Lettuce Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sandwich

  1. Slice the Boston brown bread very thin.

  2. Lightly butter the slices and spread with Neufchatel or cottage cheese.

  3. Dip each lettuce leaf in a bowl of French salad dressing.

  4. Lay the dressed lettuce on the buttered brown bread.

  5. Press another slice of buttered brown bread on top to complete the sandwich.

Serve

  1. Keep the sandwiches moist until ready to serve.

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 + lettucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Cheese + lettucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together614 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

Boston brown bread
Provides the base and structure that holds the filling together.
Neufchatel cheese or cottage cheese
Adds creamy richness and moisture that spreads over the bread.
Crisp lettuce leaves
Adds crisp texture and fresh, watery crunch to the sandwich.
French salad dressing
Adds sweetness, acidity and moisture to the lettuce.
Butter
Coats the bread, adding fat and richness and keeping the cheese from soaking in.

The step that matters

Keep the sandwiches moist until ready to serve. Bread dries out quickly once cut, and the dressed lettuce releases moisture, so the sandwiches can turn soggy or stale if left uncovered too long before serving.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

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