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Excellent Sandwiches

A sandwich made with boiled chicken, pickles, olives, celery, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Dill and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 382 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Excellent Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken until very tender, then let it cool overnight, reserving some of the cooking liquid.

  2. Season with salt and pepper before refrigerating overnight.

Make the filling

  1. Chop the chicken, dill pickle, egg yolks, olives, and celery finely.

  2. Spread the mixture on thin slices of bread to make sandwiches.

  3. Store the sandwiches in a jar covered with a damp cloth to keep them fresh.

Variations

  1. For another variation, mix chopped pimientos and queen olives with enough mayonnaise to spread easily.

  2. Cut bread into circular slices and layer with lettuce, chopped cucumber, and pimientos mixed with mayonnaise.

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. Dill + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together382 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + dilltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,630 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  5. Dill + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,223 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein; slow boiling until very tender keeps it moist and easy to chop.
Egg yolks
Add richness and a creamy texture to the filling.
Mayonnaise
Binds the chopped ingredients and adds fat and moisture so the filling spreads easily.
Dill pickle
Adds acidity and a sharp tang that balances the rich filling.

The step that matters

Chilling the chicken overnight. Cooling the chicken fully in its cooking liquid lets it firm up and stay moist, so the chopped filling holds together and does not turn dry or stringy.

Swap the dill

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, egg, olive, celery, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Dillthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, egg, olive, celery, 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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