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Savory Sandwiches

A sandwich made with a paste of chopped chicken, minced boiled ham, butter, mace, onion juice, and oyster liquor on Graham bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Savory Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix the chopped chicken, minced ham, butter, mace, and onion juice into a soft paste in a bowl.

  2. Add oyster liquor as needed to achieve a paste-like consistency.

  3. Place the mixture in a saucepan over boiling water and stir until hot.

  4. Remove from heat and let it cool.

Assemble

  1. Spread the mixture between thin slices of Graham 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. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 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

Chicken
Forms the bulk of the paste, giving it body and substance.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the paste stay soft and spreadable.
Ham
Adds savory, salty flavor to the filling.
Oyster liquor
Adds moisture and briny flavor to bind the paste to a spreadable consistency.

The step that matters

Stirring over boiling water until hot. Gentle heating over simmering water warms the paste evenly without scorching it. Overheating can cause the butter to separate and the mixture to turn dry or greasy, so keep the heat moderate and stir steadily.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, ham, butter, onion, oyster, bread):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, butter, onion, oyster, 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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