Why it works: Ham and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,526 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓
Fried Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Heat the fat from bacon or ham in a frying pan.
Crack the eggs into a shallow dish, being careful not to break the yolks.
Cook and serve
Slip the eggs carefully into the frying pan and add 1 tablespoon of hot water, then cover the pan.
When the whites become firm, the eggs are ready to serve.
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.
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Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,526 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
- Eggs
- Proteins in the whites and yolks set with heat, giving the fried egg its firm body.
- Fat from bacon or ham
- Hot fat conducts heat evenly across the pan and adds savory flavor to the eggs.
- Hot water
- Steam from the hot water, trapped under the cover, helps set the tops of the whites.
The step that matters
Slip the eggs carefully into the pan. A gentle slide keeps the yolks intact. Hot fat sets the whites quickly at the edges, so a broken yolk spreads and cannot be lifted out cleanly once the eggs begin to firm.
“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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