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Chicken Sandwiches

A sandwich filled with chopped chicken, ham, and a creamy egg mixture seasoned with mustard and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and bread 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 ↓

Chicken Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the chicken and ham, but not too fine.

  2. In a bowl, mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs with the salad oil until smooth.

  3. Add the mustard and vinegar to the egg mixture, and season with salt if needed.

  4. Stir in the chopped chicken and ham until well combined.

Assemble

  1. Spread some of the mixture between two slices of buttered bread.

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. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks mash into a smooth, creamy base that binds the filling.
Salad oil
Adds fat to the mashed yolks, making the filling smoother and richer.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the eggs and meat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the egg mixture.
Cooked chicken
Provides the main meaty body and texture of the filling.
Cooked ham
Adds salty, savory flavor to the chicken and egg filling.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, egg, 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.

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