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Ham Salad

A salad of boiled ham and lettuce dressed with a sour cream, vinegar, mustard, and egg yolk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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. Combine small pieces of boiled ham and the heart and inside leaves of lettuce in a salad bowl.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, mix sour cream, vinegar, salt, butter, sugar, and mustard until smooth.

  2. Boil the mixture, then add the well-beaten egg yolks, stirring carefully until it thickens to a starch-like consistency.

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

Serve

  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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  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

Sour cream
Provides richness and a creamy body to the dressing.
Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing when gently heated and help it hold together.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the dressing.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the dressing.
Boiled ham
Supplies the savoury, meaty body of the salad.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the boiling mixture. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if they are added too fast or stirred too little they can scramble into lumps. Stirring carefully keeps the dressing smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

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