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Nut Sandwiches

A sandwich made with walnuts, mayonnaise, cayenne pepper, and buttered bread.

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 ↓

Nut Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Moisten the walnuts with a little mayonnaise sauce.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the mixture thickly on buttered bread.

  2. Sprinkle lightly with cayenne pepper.

  3. Cover with another slice of buttered bread.

  4. Trim off the crusts and cut into triangles.

  5. Serve garnished with cress or parsley.

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. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Walnuts
Provide the bulk and crunchy texture of the filling.
Mayonnaise sauce
Binds the chopped walnuts and keeps the filling moist.
Cayenne pepper
Adds a light, gentle heat that contrasts with the rich filling.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lima beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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