Name: Ham Sandwiches
Ingredients: cold boiled ham; 1 tablespoon chopped pickle or juice of 1 lemon; 1 teaspoon mustard; pepper to taste; 4 slices of bread; butter for spreading

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Ham Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

Chop or grate the cold boiled ham finely.
Mix the ham with chopped pickle or lemon juice, mustard, and pepper.

Assemble the sandwiches

Butter the slices of bread.
Spread the ham mixture on the buttered bread slices.
Place the slices together to form sandwiches.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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).
Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,816 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled ham: Provides the main savory filling and meaty flavor of the sandwich.
Pickle or lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich, salty flavor of the ham.
Mustard: Adds sharp, pungent flavor that cuts through the richness of the ham.
Bread: Forms the soft outer structure that holds the filling together.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, and creates a moisture barrier that keeps the bread from soaking up the filling.

Swap the lemon

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

Lemonthe original
Figfits about as well
Red currantfits less well
Plumfits less well

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