Name: Ham Salad
Ingredients: ½ tablespoon granulated gelatine; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; slices of ham; mayonnaise or French dressing

Why it works: Lemon and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,788 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Ham Salad

Ingredients

½ tablespoon granulated gelatine
1 tablespoon lemon juice
slices of ham
mayonnaise or French dressing

Directions

Prepare

Soak the gelatine in 1 tablespoon of water until softened.
Strain the lemon juice over the slices of ham.
Reheat the ham over hot water.

Combine and serve

Mix the softened gelatine with the ham.
Serve with mayonnaise or pass French dressing with the salad.

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.

Lemon + hamtop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,788 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine: Sets the softened liquid so the ham holds together as a salad.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the ham.
Ham: Serves as the main body of the salad.
Mayonnaise or french dressing: Adds fat and moisture to coat the salad when served.

“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.