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Eggs with Ham

A skillet dish of eggs cooked with boiled ham, onion, mustard, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Eggs with Ham

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the minced onion and brown it.

  3. Stir in the ham and sprinkle with mustard; cook until the ham begins to crisp.

  4. Beat the eggs and stir them into the skillet; cook until thick.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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
Set into a thick, tender mass as they cook, forming the body of the dish.
Boiled ham
Adds savory flavor and some crisped, browned texture when cooked in butter.
Butter
Carries the heat and adds richness, helping the onion and ham brown.
Onion
Browns in the butter to add sweetness and savory depth.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, tangy aroma that cuts through the richness of the eggs and butter.

The step that matters

Cooking the eggs until thick. Eggs set from liquid to soft solid as proteins coagulate with heat. Cooking gently and stopping once thick keeps them tender instead of dry, rubbery, or curdled.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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