Name: Cream and Chicken Salad
Ingredients: ½ pound ham and chicken paste; ½ pint whipped cream; a few drops of sherry; coarse sea salt; lettuce leaves; lean ham or chicken (for stitching); 1 egg white (for brushing); 1 hard-boiled egg yolk (for powdering); fine cress (for serving)

Why it works: Ham and sherry work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 377 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Cream and Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the paste

Rub the ham and chicken paste through a fine sieve.
Mix the paste with whipped cream, sherry, and salt.

Shape and serve

Place the mixture on lettuce leaves and stitch into rolls with threads of lean ham or chicken.
Brush the leaves with egg white and powder with the rubbed yolk of a hard-boiled egg.
Set the rolls on a bed of fine cress and serve.

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.

Ham + sherrytop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).
Ham + chickentop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,497 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Chicken + sherrytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together891 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Chicken + lettucetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,421 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham and chicken paste: Forms the main body of the rolls and gives the savoury meaty flavour.
Whipped cream: Adds moisture and a light, soft texture to the paste.
Egg white: Brushed on the leaves, it helps the powdered yolk stick to the surface.
Hard-boiled egg yolk: Rubbed to a powder, it gives a fine golden coating and a rich, mellow flavour.

The step that matters

Rub the ham and chicken paste through a fine sieve. Pushing the paste through a fine sieve breaks up fibres and lumps, producing a smooth, even texture that holds together well when rolled and keeps the cream evenly distributed.

Swap the lettuce

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

Asparagusfits better
Leekfits better
Potatofits better
Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, chicken, cream, sherry, egg. 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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Cream and Chicken Salad