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Hot Ham or Chicken Sandwiches

A sandwich of buttered bread with ham or chicken, seasoned and fried, served with pickles or olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Hot Ham or Chicken Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Spread buttered bread with chopped ham or chicken.

  2. If using ham, mix it with a little mustard and moisten with cream if necessary.

  3. Mix chopped chicken with pepper, salt, and a little cream or chicken gravy.

Cook and serve

  1. Dip each sandwich into a slightly beaten egg diluted with 2 tablespoons of milk.

  2. Sauté in butter, browning both sides.

  3. Serve with pickles or olives.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs (in the method)
Egg coating binds the bread and sets into a golden, custard-like crust when fried.
Butter
Fat for sautéing that browns the bread and adds rich flavour.
Chopped ham
Provides the savoury, salty meat flavour of the filling.
Chopped chicken
Provides the main meat filling, seasoned with pepper and salt.
Mustard
Adds sharp acidity and aroma that cut through the richness of the ham.

The step that matters

Browning both sides in butter. Medium heat lets the egg-coated bread brown and set evenly; too hot and the outside burns before the egg cooks through, too cool and the bread soaks up butter and turns greasy.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, ham, cream, chicken, pepper, milk, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, ham, cream, chicken, pepper, milk, butter. 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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