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Deviled Ham Sandwiches

A sandwich made with chopped boiled ham, egg yolks, mustard, lemon juice, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Deviled Ham Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the cold boiled ham finely.

  2. Rub the egg yolks smooth with the melted butter.

  3. Mix the ham, mustard, lemon juice, and egg yolk mixture together. Season to taste.

Assemble

  1. Spread the mixture on thin slices of bread.

  2. Fold the slices together or roll them up.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

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 savoury meat base that the filling is built around.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Rubbed smooth with butter, they make the filling creamy and rich.
Melted butter
Adds fat that helps the egg yolks blend into a smooth, spreadable paste.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the yolks and butter.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the filling.

The step that matters

Rub the egg yolks smooth with the melted butter. If the yolks are not worked fully smooth, the filling stays grainy and crumbly rather than spreadable. Pressing them through with the warm butter lets the fat coat the yolk particles evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Coconutfits about as well

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

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