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Potato and Ham Sandwiches

A sandwich made with mashed potatoes and boiled ham, fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,526 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Potato and Ham Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stir 2 eggs into 1½ pints of well-seasoned mashed potatoes without beating.

  2. Spread 2 tablespoons of the potato mixture smoothly on a surface.

  3. Place a slice of neatly trimmed boiled ham on the potato.

  4. Cover the ham with more potato and pinch the edges together.

Fry

  1. Fry in boiling lard until golden brown.

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. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  2. Potato + hamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together127 recipes

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

  3. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 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

Eggs
Bind the potato mixture so the sandwiches hold together when fried.
Mashed potatoes
Form the soft outer casing that fries to a crisp golden crust.
Boiled ham
Provides the savoury filling sealed inside the potato layers.

The step that matters

Pinch the edges together. If the edges are not sealed firmly, the filling can leak out into the boiling lard and the sandwich may fall apart during frying.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, ham. 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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