Name: Ham-and-egg Sandwiches
Ingredients: 1 cup chopped ham; 2 hard boiled egg yolks, sieved; ½ cup mayonnaise dressing; 2 slices of bread; Butter, for spreading

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-and-egg Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

Chop the ham and pound it smooth in a mortar.
Mix the sieved egg yolks with the mayonnaise dressing.

Assemble

Butter one slice of bread lightly and spread it with the ham.
Spread the other slice with the egg and dressing mixture.
Press the two slices together.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 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

Ham: Provides the savoury meaty filling and the main flavour of the sandwich.
Egg yolks: Add richness and a creamy, soft texture to the filling.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and moisture, binding the egg yolks into a spreadable paste.
Bread: Forms the structure that holds the filling together.
Butter: Adds fat and flavour to the bread and helps keep it from soaking up the filling.

“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.