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Chicken and Ham Sandwiches

A sandwich made with minced chicken and ham, buttered bread, salt, and watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 until finely minced.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread butter on the brown bread slices.

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

  3. Sprinkle with salt and add watercress leaves.

  4. Close the sandwich and serve.

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

Cooked chicken
Provides the main protein and bulk of the filling.
Cooked ham
Adds savory, salty flavor to the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the bread and keeps the filling from soaking in.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a sieve. Pounding and sieving breaks the meat into a fine, even texture so the filling spreads smoothly and bites evenly. Coarse pieces would make the sandwich uneven and harder to close neatly.

“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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