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Ham Salad

A salad of chopped boiled ham and lettuce dressed with a sauce of salt, butter, pepper, sugar, mustard, vinegar, egg yolks, and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

  1. Chop the remains of a boiled ham finely.

  2. Add the heart and inside leaves of a head of lettuce.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine salt, butter, pepper, sugar, mustard, vinegar, and egg yolks.

  2. Boil the mixture until it creams.

  3. Let the sauce cool.

Combine and finish

  1. Pour the cooled sauce over the ham and lettuce, mixing well.

  2. Stir in the sweet cream.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they cook and give it a rich, creamy body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the sauce.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the dressing smooth and mellow.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the sauce feel smooth.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that complements the ham.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it creams. Egg yolks scramble if overheated, so the sauce must be heated gently and stirred until it thickens smoothly; overcooking curdles it into grainy lumps.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, pepper, sugar, mustard, vinegar, 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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