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Ham Sandwiches

A sandwich made with stale bread, butter, thin ham slices, mustard, and parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Ham Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sandwiches

  1. Butter the slices of stale bread.

  2. Cover one slice with thin slices of ham, removing skin and unpalatable parts.

  3. Spread a little mustard on the ham.

  4. Top with another slice of buttered bread.

  5. Press the sandwich together and cut into pieces 2.5 by 2 inches.

Serve

  1. Arrange on a napkin and garnish with parsley.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

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

  4. Ham + mustardtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together747 recipes

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

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Dry, sturdy slices hold the filling and stay firm when pressed together.
Butter
Coats the bread so it adds richness and keeps the bread from soaking up moisture from the filling.
Ham
Provides the savory, salty filling that forms the body of the sandwich.
Mustard
Adds sharp acidity and aroma that cut through the richness of the butter and ham.

The step that matters

Butter the bread to the edges. A thin, even layer of fat across the whole slice acts as a moisture barrier, so the stale bread stays firm rather than going soggy from the ham and mustard.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Celeryfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, ham, mustard. 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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