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Ham Mince

A dish of finely chopped cold ham simmered in a peppered mustard sauce thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Ham Mince

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Chop the cold ham very fine.

  2. Pour boiling water over the ham and drain off.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a pot, combine equal parts of milk and water.

  2. Add pepper and mustard to taste.

  3. Thicken the mixture with a little flour.

  4. Pour the sauce over the ham and serve at once.

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

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

  2. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cold ham
Provides the main meat and savoury flavour of the dish.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy body to the sauce.
Flour
Its starch swells in hot liquid and thickens the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with flour. Flour must be mixed smoothly into the warm liquid so its starch disperses evenly. Added in clumps or too much at once, it forms lumps or an overly thick, pasty sauce. The starch only thickens fully when the sauce is heated.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, milk, pepper, flour):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, milk, pepper, flour. 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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