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Chicken and Ham Sandwiches

A sandwich made with shredded cooked chicken and ham, buttered bread, salt, and watercress leaves.

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

Prepare the filling

  1. Pound the chicken and ham together in a mortar until finely mixed.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Assemble the sandwich

  1. Spread butter on two slices of brown bread.

  2. Place the chicken and ham mixture between the slices.

  3. Add salt and top with watercress leaves.

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

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

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

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

  4. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main savoury filling and body of the sandwich.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the filling.
Brown bread
Gives the sandwich its structure and a slightly nutty, earthy flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and a fat barrier that helps keep the bread from soaking up moisture.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a sieve. Pushing the pounded meat through a sieve breaks it into a fine, even texture. Coarse lumps would make the filling uneven and harder to spread and bite through cleanly.

“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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