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Ham Toast

A toast topped with a ham and egg white mixture, finished with grated yolk and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Ham Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ham sauce

  1. In a saucepan, blend the butter and flour together.

  2. Add the sweet milk and cook for a few minutes until slightly thickened.

  3. Stir in the ham and the mashed whites of the hard boiled eggs.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the round slices of toast.

  2. Grate the yolks of the hard boiled eggs over the top and garnish with parsley.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness to the flour-thickened base.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce when cooked with the butter.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it cooks.
Ham
Adds savory flavor and meaty texture to the sauce.
Hard boiled eggs
Mashed whites add body to the sauce; grated yolks add richness on top.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce until slightly thickened. Flour needs to be cooked in the hot fat and liquid to thicken fully and lose its raw taste. Stop too early and the sauce stays thin; overcook it and it can turn gluey.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

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