Skip to main content
Main

Potato and Ham Sandwiches

A sandwich made with mashed potatoes, boiled ham, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Egg and ham 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 ↓

Potato and Ham Sandwiches

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potato sandwiches

  1. Stir two eggs into the mashed potatoes without beating.

  2. Spread 2 tablespoons of the mashed potatoes smoothly on a surface.

  3. Lay a slice of boiled ham on the potato.

  4. Cover with more potato and pinch the edges together.

Fry

  1. Heat boiling lard in a pan and fry the sandwiches until golden brown.

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. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  2. Potato + hamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together127 recipes

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

  3. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Form the bulk of the sandwich and crisp into a golden crust when fried.
Eggs
Bind the mashed potatoes so they hold their shape when shaped and fried.
Boiled ham
Adds savoury flavour and a salty filling inside the potato coating.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and browns the potato surface.

The step that matters

Stir the eggs in without beating. Gently folding the eggs keeps the potato smooth and light, while beating would overwork it and make it gluey, so the sandwiches are harder to shape and may fry unevenly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Potatothe original

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

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes