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Hot Ham or Chicken Sandwiches

A sandwich made with buttered bread, ham or chicken, mustard, cream, pepper, salt, optional gravy, dipped in egg and milk, then sautéed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Hot Ham or Chicken Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fillings

  1. Spread buttered bread with chopped ham or chicken.

  2. If using ham, mix it with a little mustard and moisten with cream if necessary.

  3. For chicken, mix with pepper, coarse sea salt, and a little cream or chicken gravy.

Coat and cook

  1. Dip each sandwich into a slightly beaten egg diluted with milk.

  2. Sauté in butter, browning both sides.

Serve

  1. Serve with pickles or olives.

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 + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Mustard + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Binds the coating and helps it set and brown around the sandwich.
Butter
Browns the bread surfaces and adds rich flavour during sautéing.
Chopped ham
Provides salty, savoury meat flavour as the main filling.
Chopped chicken
Provides the mild, savoury meat filling for the sandwich.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavour that cuts through the rich ham.
Milk
Thins the egg mixture so it coats the bread evenly and stays moist.

The step that matters

Browning both sides in butter. Butter over moderate heat browns the egg coating and bread through the Maillard reaction. Too little heat leaves the coating pale and soggy, while too much burns the butter before the filling warms through.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, ham, cream, chicken, pepper, egg, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, ham, cream, chicken, pepper, egg, milk. 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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