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Chicken and Ham Sandwiches

A sandwich made with minced chicken and ham, gravy, cheese, and butter, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Chicken and Ham Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Mix the minced chicken and ham in a bowl.

  2. Stir in the boiling gravy and warm the mixture briefly over low heat.

  3. Use a round cutter to cut the bread slices.

  4. Fry the bread slices until golden brown.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread the chicken and ham mixture between two slices of bread.

  2. Add a small piece of cheese and a paste made from butter.

  3. Place the sandwiches in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot on a folded napkin.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold chicken
Provides the main savoury filling and bulk of the sandwich.
Cold ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the filling.
Boiling gravy
Adds moisture to the filling so it spreads and stays juicy.
Old bread
Forms the structure that holds the filling together.
Cheese
Melts into the filling, adding richness and a binding texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the bread brown.

The step that matters

Warm the chicken and ham mixture briefly over low heat. Gentle heat warms the meat and gravy evenly without toughening the chicken or drying the filling. Overheating makes minced meat firm and dry, so the sandwich loses the moist texture the gravy is meant to give.

“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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