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Salad

Jellied Ham Salad

A chilled salad of chopped ham, lemon juice, gelatin, stock, and cream, folded into a firm, flavored gel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Jellied Ham Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatin

  1. Soak the gelatin in ½ cup cold water for 15 minutes.

  2. Stir the gelatin over hot water until dissolved.

Make the jelly

  1. Remove from heat and add all other ingredients except the cream.

  2. Place the mixture in a moderately cool place.

  3. Whip the cream and gently fold it into the mixture.

  4. Place on ice and stir occasionally until it begins to congeal.

  5. Pour quickly into small molds and refrigerate until stiff.

Serve

  1. Turn out on lettuce and serve with mayonnaise dressing.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Cream + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Ham + chickentop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + chickentop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Stock from chicken or veal
Forms the main liquid base that the gelatin sets into a savoury jelly.
Double cream
Adds richness and a softer, creamier texture to the set jelly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness.
Cooked ham
Supplies the main meaty flavour and bite throughout the jelly.

The step that matters

Chilling until it begins to congeal, then pouring quickly. Gelatin sets as it cools. If the mixture sets too far before it goes into the molds, it becomes lumpy and uneven. If it stays too warm, it will not firm properly. Stirring on ice gives even cooling, and pouring at once keeps the set uniform.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Pineapplefits less well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, cream, gelatin, chicken, pepper. 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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