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Ham Salad

A salad made with boiled ham, pickles, and a chicken-salad style dressing, seasoned with celery seed and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,497 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Ham Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the boiled ham and pickles finely.

  2. Prepare a dressing similar to chicken salad.

  3. Add a little celery seed to the dressing.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt to taste.

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. Ham + chickentop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Ham + celerytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,608 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled ham
Provides the main meaty body and savory flavor of the salad.
Pickles
Add acidity and a sharp, tangy contrast to the rich dressing.
Dressing
Binds the chopped ingredients together and keeps the salad moist.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, chicken. 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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