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Bread

Ham Toast

A toast topped with a cooked ham, egg yolk, flour, and milk mixture seasoned with mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,066 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ham Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the chopped ham, egg yolk, flour and milk in a bowl and mix well.

  2. Heat the mixture in a saucepan until it boils.

Season and serve

  1. Season with mustard to taste.

  2. Serve the mixture over toast.

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. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Ham + mustardtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together747 recipes

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

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Supplies the savoury meat flavour that forms the body of the topping.
Egg yolk
Enriches the mixture and helps it thicken and hold together when heated.
Flour
Its starch swells when boiled, thickening the milk into a spreadable sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that gives the sauce a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Heat only until it boils. The egg yolk can curdle if overheated, while the flour needs to reach a boil to fully thicken the milk.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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