Skip to main content
Main

Deviled Ham Sandwiches

A sandwich made with deviled ham, hard‑boiled eggs, sweet pickles, mustard, and optional lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Deviled Ham Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the hard-boiled eggs and sweet pickles finely.

Mix and assemble

  1. In a bowl, mix the deviled ham, chopped eggs, pickles, and mustard until well combined.

  2. Spread the mixture between fresh buns or slices of bread.

  3. Add lettuce leaves if desired.

Serve

  1. 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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Bread + lettucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Deviled ham
Provides the main savory meat flavor and a spreadable, moist base for the filling.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add creamy body and richness that helps bind the filling together.
Sweet pickles
Add sweetness and a crisp, tangy contrast to the rich ham.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharpness and acidity that brightens the flavor of the filling.

Swap the lettuce

The recipe marks lettuce as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, egg, mustard, bread):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes