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Ham Salad

A salad of chopped cold boiled ham and celery, dressed with a slaw‑like dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Ham Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cold boiled ham until mixed and pieces are the size of peas.

  2. Add an equal quantity of finely chopped celery.

  3. Substitute lettuce if celery is out of season.

Assemble and dress

  1. Line a dish with lettuce leaves and fill it with the chopped ham and celery.

  2. Prepare a dressing similar to that used for cold slaw and pour it over the salad.

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. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Ham + celerytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,608 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Ham + lettucetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled ham
Forms the main body of the salad and provides savoury flavour and substance.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch to the chopped mixture.
Lettuce leaves
Provides a crisp, fresh base that holds the salad and adds moisture.
Dressing for cold slaw
Moistens the salad and adds flavour that coats the ham and celery.

The step that matters

Chop the ham to even, pea-sized pieces. Uniform pieces mix evenly with the celery and take up the dressing consistently, so each bite has the same texture and moisture rather than dry chunks or a mushy paste.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, celery. 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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