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Hot Ham or Chicken Sandwiches

A fried sandwich made with buttered bread, ham or chicken, mustard, cream, and seasonings, served with pickles or olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 filling

  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.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip each sandwich into a slightly beaten egg diluted with 2 tablespoons of milk.

  2. Sauté in butter, browning both sides.

  3. 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

Egg
Binds the coating to the bread and helps it set and brown when fried.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the coating and adds rich flavour.
Milk
Thins the beaten egg so it coats the bread evenly.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the ham or chicken filling.

The step that matters

Browning both sides in butter. Butter browns at a moderate heat and can burn if the pan is too hot. Browning the egg coating on both sides sets it and gives colour and flavour, so the sandwich stays golden rather than pale or scorched.

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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