Jacques Pépin's Simple Radish Sandwich, Inspired By James Beard

Sometimes, the simple things in life are the best — and few know this better than the great Jacques Pépin. From elegant pound cakes to foolproof soufflés, he's made a name out of putting simplicity and flavor at the forefront, showing that great food is accessible to just about everyone. One of his simplest recipes is also one of his finest – a humble radish sandwich. And humble it truly is: thinly sliced radish and a little salt, nestled between two slices of buttered white bread. Once assembled, the sandwich is relieved of its crusts before being graced with a little more butter around its edges and dunked in parsley on each side.

It's a lovely sandwich. So simple, you'd be fooled into thinking it might be boring. It's not. The crisp radish, bitter and fresh, boosted by the parsley, takes on a surprising sweetness when laminated by the butter. The bread provides a more-than-ample pedestal for the other ingredients. It's a well-balanced sandwich, and it's very French. Pépin's recipe was actually inspired by a sandwich served to him by the legendary American chef James Beard. Pépin's wife fell in love with the snack — so much that he adapted the recipe. Beard's version uses mayonnaise in place of butter, onion in place of the radish, and is served on round bread, but it's otherwise identical. The sweetness in Beard's version is palpable, and that tang from the onion combines perfectly with the creamy mayonnaise.

It's not surprising that James Beard gets it so right here. He began his career as a specialist in hors d'oeuvres in the midst of the cocktail party craze of mid-century New York. This is a sandwich that feels very old-fashioned in its simplicity, but that's no detraction. Beard's dish strips back the American sandwich, yet makes it a worthy canapé with his own flair. You might think that using a ring cutter and serving them round does absolutely nothing for the flavor (and Beard himself might have thought the same) — but studies have shown that (thanks to psychology) people actually perceive round foods as sweeter. Simply by cutting the corners off his sandwich, Beard emphasized the onion's sweetness, which he compounded by pairing it with brioche.

Jacques Pépin's sandwich echoes the philosophy of Beard's, stripping everything away and harkening back to radis au beurre, or buttered radishes — a classic French snack. The French love radishes, and they love putting them in sandwiches: What Pépin is doing isn't radical. But Beard's touch of spreading the outside of the sandwiches with mayonnaise and rolling them in parsley really elevates both sandwiches, playing with textures and teasing just enough bitterness to allow the simple fillings to shine. If you want to kick things up a notch, though, a homemade mayonnaise laced with olive oil will propel that bitterness to the front of your palate, making for a deeply satisfying bite when followed by the sweet onion, mayonnaise, and brioche.