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Cheese and Ham

A simple mixture of white sauce, ham, cheese, and cayenne pepper served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and cheese work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 303 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Cheese and Ham

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the white sauce, chopped ham, grated cheese, and cayenne pepper, then mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Serve the mixture on slices of toast.

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 + cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + cheesetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sauce + hamtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,314 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

White sauce
Creamy base that moistens the ham and cheese and holds the mixture together.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty meat flavour to the filling.
Grated cheese
Melts into the sauce and adds richness and savoury flavour.
Cayenne pepper
Adds a sharp background heat that balances the rich sauce and cheese.

“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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