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Dessert

Ham Salad, Jellied

A chilled gelatin-based salad containing ham, seasoned with cayenne pepper and lemon juice, finished with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Ham Salad, Jellied

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatin

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water.

  2. Add boiling chicken stock and strain the mixture.

Make the salad

  1. Mix in the chopped ham, cayenne, and lemon juice.

  2. Let the mixture stand until it begins to thicken.

  3. Fold in the whipped cream and pour into a mold.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Gelatin + creamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  4. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly once chilled.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and a creamy texture to the set jelly.
Chopped ham
Provides the savory meat flavor and bulk of the salad.
Chicken stock
Supplies savory flavor and the liquid that the gelatin sets in.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand until it begins to thicken. Gelatin begins setting as it cools. If the mixture is folded with cream before it thickens, the cream may separate or sink. If it thickens too far, the cream will not blend in evenly and the texture becomes lumpy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Pineapplefits less well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against gelatin, chicken, ham, pepper, cream. 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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