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Ham Salad

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and endive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Ham Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Finely slice the onions.

  2. Tear the lettuce and endive into small pieces.

  3. Combine the onions, lettuce, and endive in a salad bowl.

  4. Shave the cooked ham on top of the salad.

  5. Sprinkle with lemon juice, salt, cayenne, Jamaica pepper, and castor sugar.

  6. Add garlic, vinegar, and oil.

  7. Sprinkle the powdered egg yolk over the salad and serve.

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. Lettuce + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Endive + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together83 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, endive, ham, lemon, pepper, sugar, garlic):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, endive, ham, lemon, pepper, sugar, garlic. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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