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A ham and cheese sandwich with a creamy cheese sauce, served immediately.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ham mixture

  1. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolk and vinegar together.

  2. Add mustard, salt, pepper, capers, onion, egg whites, and ham; mix well.

Fry the bread

  1. Slice the bread, trim the crusts, and fry in butter until golden, being careful not to overcook.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the ham mixture on each slice of bread.

  2. In a saucepan, combine cheese and ale; add cayenne and stir until creamy.

  3. Pour the cheese sauce over the ham and bread and serve immediately.

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. Mustard + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Capers + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolk
Binds the mixture and adds richness to the ham filling.
Egg whites
Chopped whites add body and a little structure to the ham mixture.
Grated cheese
Melts into the ale to form a creamy sauce that coats the sandwich.
Ham
Provides the savoury, meaty filling of the sandwich.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the egg and ham filling.
Baker's bread
Forms the base, which fries in butter to a crisp golden surface.

The step that matters

Fry the bread until golden only. Bread that is overcooked turns dry and bitter, because prolonged heat over-browns its surface and drives off moisture. Stop as soon as it turns golden so it stays tender under the topping.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, mustard, pepper, capers, ham, 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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