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Ham Sandwiches

A sandwich made with finely chopped ham, tongue, chicken, eggs, mustard, capers, mayonnaise, and seasoned with salt, paprika, and buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ham Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the meat filling

  1. Chop the meat finely, pound, and mix well in a bowl. Alternatively, use a food chopper.

  2. Season the mixture with mustard, salt, paprika, and capers. Moisten with mayonnaise.

  3. Chop the whites of the hard boiled eggs finely and mix them into the meat mixture.

Make the egg filling

  1. Press the yolks of the hard boiled eggs through a sieve, season with salt and paprika, and mix with enough mayonnaise to spread.

Assemble and pack

  1. Cream the butter and spread it on thin slices of bread.

  2. On one slice, spread the meat mixture; on the other, spread the egg mixture.

  3. Press the slices together, wrap in oiled paper, and pack. Ensure the sandwiches are moist.

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. Mustard + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled or baked ham
Provides the main meaty body and savory flavor of the filling.
Cold chicken
Adds tender meat texture and mild flavor to the filling.
Cold boiled tongue
Contributes rich, tender meat texture and savory depth to the filling.
Hard boiled eggs
Give the egg filling its creamy, rich texture from the yolks and body from the whites.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture so the meat and egg mixtures spread and stay moist.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the bread and helps keep it from soaking up moisture.

The step that matters

Moistening the fillings with mayonnaise. Cold cooked meat and egg are dry and crumble easily. Adding just enough mayonnaise binds the filling and keeps it spreadable without making it soggy, which also helps the bread stay intact.

“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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