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Hot Ham or Chicken Sandwiches

A buttered bread sandwich filled with ham or chicken, coated in egg and fried, served hot with pickles or olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Hot Ham or Chicken Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Spread buttered bread with chopped ham or chicken.

  2. If using ham, mix it with a little mustard and moisten with cream if necessary.

  3. For chicken, mix with pepper, salt, and a little cream or chicken gravy.

Cook and serve

  1. Dip each sandwich into a beaten egg diluted with milk.

  2. Sauté in butter, browning both sides.

  3. Serve with pickles or olives.

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 + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Mustard + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
The beaten egg coats the sandwich, setting into a golden crust when fried.
Butter
Frying in butter adds fat that browns the outside and gives a rich flavor.
Cream
Moistens the ham or chicken filling so it stays soft rather than dry.
Milk
Thins the beaten egg so it coats the bread evenly and cooks more tenderly.

The step that matters

Browning both sides in butter. Cooking over moderate heat lets the butter and egg brown through the Maillard reaction for color and flavor. Too little heat leaves the coating pale and soggy, while too much can burn the butter before the egg sets.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, ham, cream, chicken, pepper, egg, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, ham, cream, chicken, pepper, egg, milk. 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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