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Ideal Sandwich

A sandwich made with ground ham, riced eggs, nuts, celery, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Ideal Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the ground ham, riced eggs, chopped nut meats, and chopped celery.

  2. Season with white pepper and salt to taste.

  3. Add enough mayonnaise to moisten the mixture.

Assemble

  1. Spread the mixture between slices of bread.

  2. Optionally, add lettuce leaves or thin slices of pickle between the slices.

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. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  3. Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled ham
Provides the savory, meaty base of the filling.
Hard cooked eggs
Give the filling body and a soft, creamy texture when riced.
Nut meats
Add crunch that contrasts with the soft eggs and ham.
Celery
Adds a crisp, fresh texture and light vegetal flavor.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture that bind the filling together.

The step that matters

Add the mayonnaise gradually. Mayonnaise is added only enough to moisten the mixture. Too much makes the filling loose and soggy, which soaks into the bread. Stirring in small amounts lets you stop once the filling holds together.

Swap the lettuce

The recipe marks lettuce as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, egg, meat, celery, white pepper, bread):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, egg, meat, celery, white pepper, bread. 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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