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Ham Salad

A salad of boiled ham and lettuce dressed with a sour cream and mustard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Ham Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. In a salad bowl, combine the bits of boiled ham with the lettuce leaves.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, mix the sour cream, vinegar, pepper, salt, butter, sugar, and mustard.

  2. Boil the mixture, then add the beaten egg yolks, stirring carefully until it thickens.

  3. Set the dressing in a cool place or on ice until cold.

Assemble

  1. Pour the dressing over the salad and mix well.

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. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sour cream
Adds richness and a creamy body to the dressing.
Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they set with gentle heat, giving it body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the cream.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that complements the ham and cream.
Boiled ham
Provides savoury, salty meat flavour and substance to the salad.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the boiled mixture. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat, but if the mixture boils too hard after they are added, they can scramble into lumps. Stir carefully and keep the heat controlled until it thickens.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Horseradishfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, cream, vinegar, pepper, butter, sugar, mustard. 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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