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Boiled Ham Sandwiches

A sandwich made with ground boiled ham, mashed hard‑boiled egg yolks, sweet cream or stock, and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,526 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Boiled Ham Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Grind the boiled ham and hard boiled eggs (boil eggs for 1 hour).

  2. Remove the yolks from the eggs and mash them into a smooth paste with sweet cream or stock.

  3. Mix the ham with the egg yolk paste until well combined.

  4. Spread the mixture on bread and place a lettuce leaf in between.

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

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

  2. Ham + creamtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Cream + lettucetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,121 recipes

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

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled ham
Provides the savoury meat base and bulk of the filling.
Hard boiled eggs
Supply the creamy yolk paste that binds and moistens the ham filling.
Sweet cream or stock
Loosens the mashed yolks into a smooth paste that spreads easily.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

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