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Mexican Raeebit Sandwich

A sandwich made with a cheese and egg mixture served between sautéed hominy slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mexican Raeebit Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rarebit

  1. Lightly brown the minced onion in the fat.

  2. Add the strained tomato, bay leaf, salt, and paprika; heat to boiling.

  3. Stir in the cheese and eggs, cooking until thick while stirring constantly.

  4. Remove the bay leaf.

Assemble and serve

  1. Slice the cooled hominy and sauté it.

  2. Spread the thick rarebit mixture between two slices of sautéed hominy.

  3. Serve very hot.

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. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + cheesetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,896 recipes

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

  3. Onion + cheesetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,849 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

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

  5. Onion + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,333 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Onion and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,333 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

Eggs
Set and thicken the cheese mixture as they cook, giving it body.
Cheese
Melts into the sauce to give it richness and a thick, creamy texture.
Strained tomato
Forms the liquid base of the rarebit, adding acidity and body.
Cooked hominy
Provides the firm, starchy base that holds the rarebit mixture.

The step that matters

Stir in the cheese and eggs, cooking until thick while stirring constantly.. Eggs can scramble if the mixture gets too hot or is not stirred, so keeping heat moderate and stirring constantly keeps the sauce smooth while the eggs thicken it.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cheese, egg. 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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