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Chicken and Ham Sandwich

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Pepper and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,491 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken and Ham Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove skin, gristle, and bone from the chicken and mince it.

  2. Add a small amount of cooked ham to the minced chicken.

  3. In a bowl, combine the chicken, ham, black pepper, coarse sea salt, lime juice, mixed spice, mustard, and butter.

  4. Beat the mixture well and transfer it to pots.

  5. Spread butter over the top of the mixture in the pots.

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. Pepper + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lime + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Chicken + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Swap the lime

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limethe original
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Avocadofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, pepper, mustard, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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