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Sardine Sandwich

A sandwich made with sardines, buttered bread, lemon juice, and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Sardine Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sardines

  1. Remove the skin from the sardines, split them, and take out the bones.

Assemble the sandwiches

  1. Spread butter very thinly on slices of bread.

  2. Place half a sardine on each slice of bread.

  3. Squeeze a little lemon juice over the sardines.

  4. Add a crisp leaf of lettuce to each sandwich.

  5. Top with another slice of buttered bread.

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

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

  2. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines
Provide the main savoury filling and rich, oily flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and a thin moist layer that keeps the bread from soaking up moisture.
Bread slices
Form the structure that holds the filling together.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, oily flavour of the sardines.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

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