Skip to main content
Main

Ham Sandwiches

A sandwich with ham, hard‑boiled egg yolks, mustard, butter, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Ham Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Boil the ham until very tender, then let it cool in the cooking water.

  2. Chop nearly half of the ham finely.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs smooth with a knife.

  2. Add the mustard, salt, and black pepper to the egg yolks.

  3. Mix in enough melted butter to make the mixture smooth and creamy.

  4. Thin the mixture with vinegar and combine it well with the chopped ham.

Assemble

  1. Spread butter and salad on each side of the bread or biscuits before assembling.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  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

Egg yolks
Their fat and emulsifying lecithin bind the filling and make it smooth and creamy.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the yolk mixture a smooth, spreadable texture.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the yolk and fat mixture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the filling and thins it for even mixing.

The step that matters

Mix in the melted butter gradually. Egg yolks and butter form a stable emulsion only when fat is added slowly while the mixture is smooth. Adding it too fast can split the filling, leaving it greasy and grainy instead of creamy.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, egg, pepper, butter, vinegar, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, egg, pepper, butter, vinegar, 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.

More ham sandwich recipes

Deviled 6Dressing 5 See all 75 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes