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Ham Patties

Ham patties made with chopped lean ham, crumbed bread, butter, milk, eggs, pepper, sea salt, and cracker crumbs, baked until done.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Ham Patties

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Chop the lean ham into small pieces.

  2. Mix the chopped ham with a good amount of crumbed bread and season with pepper.

  3. If the ham is all lean, add a lump of butter.

  4. Moisten the mixture with milk until it forms a soft paste.

Bake

  1. Fill muffin tins with the mixture and break an egg on top of each.

  2. Sprinkle with pepper, coarse sea salt, and a few cracker crumbs.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the egg is done, about 10 minutes.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean ham
Provides the savoury meat base of the patty.
Crumbed bread
Absorbs moisture and gives the mixture body so it holds together.
Milk
Moistens the bread into a soft paste that keeps the patties tender.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the patty and forming a topping.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to lean ham.

The step that matters

Baking until the egg is just set. Eggs set between about 70 and 80 °C, and overbaking makes them rubbery and dry. Stop once the white is firm but the yolk still looks soft, so the patty stays moist.

“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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