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Ham Rolls for Six

Ham rolls made with minced ham, parsley, nuts, egg white, whipped cream, coated in cracker crumbs, fried, served with cucumber and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Ham Rolls for Six

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine minced ham, chopped parsley, chopped nuts, and beaten egg white.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Gently fold in the whipped cream.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the mixture into rolls.

  2. Dip each roll in beaten egg, then coat with cracker crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in deep hot oil until golden brown.

  2. Serve with sliced cucumber and mayonnaise.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Nuts + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Parsley + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Parsley + nutstop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together62 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Minced ham
Provides the main savoury flavour and meaty body of the filling.
Egg white
Beaten stiff, it traps air and gives the filling a light, set structure.
Whipped cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the filling tender inside the crust.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the cracker crumbs stick evenly to each roll.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp coating that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the whipped cream. Whipped cream and beaten egg white hold air in their foam. Stirring vigorously deflates them, so the rolls turn dense instead of light and tender.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, parsley, egg, cream, pepper. 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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