Name: Ham with Cheese
Ingredients: 1 slice stale bread; 2 eggs; 2 oz butter; 2 tablespoons grated ham; 1 tablespoon fine bread crumbs; ½ cup cream; 2 tablespoons grated cheese; pepper to taste; salt to taste

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 with Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Heat the butter in a chafing dish and brown the stale bread in it.
Remove the bread and add the ham, bread crumbs, cheese, cream, pepper, and salt to the dish.
Stir the mixture for a few minutes until heated through.
Serve the mixture on top of the browned bread.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,130 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread: Forms the base that holds the topping and soaks up butter as it browns.
Eggs: Not used in the steps as written, so no role is assigned.
Butter: Browns the bread and adds richness to the dish.
Grated cheese: Melts into the cream to make the topping creamy and savory.
Cream: Adds moisture and richness so the mixture turns smooth as it heats.
Grated ham: Adds savory, salty flavor to the topping.

“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.