Skip to main content
Main

Sliced Beef Sandwich

A sandwich made with whole wheat bread, thinly sliced roast beef, butter, horseradish cream sauce, and assembled with the meat and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Sliced Beef Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Slice the cold roast beef extremely thin, removing all fat and gristle.

  2. Mix the grated horseradish with the cream sauce.

Assemble

  1. Butter the slices of whole wheat bread.

  2. Spread the beef on the buttered bread.

  3. Spread the horseradish cream sauce over each slice of meat.

  4. Assemble the sandwich by putting the slices together.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Wheat + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together209 recipes

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

  5. Wheat + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together319 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Whole wheat bread
Provides the base structure that holds the filling together.
Cold roast beef
Supplies the main protein and savory flavor of the sandwich.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the bread and helps keep it from soaking up moisture.
Grated dry horseradish
Contributes sharp, pungent heat that cuts through the richness of the beef.
Cream sauce
Adds moisture and creaminess that balances the sharpness of the horseradish.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, bread, beef, butter, cream, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes