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French Hash

A baked ham and egg dish with French mustard, parsley, cream, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

French Hash

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the cakes

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the chopped ham, mustard, parsley, and cream thoroughly.

  3. Form the mixture into cakes and create a depression in the center of each.

Bake and brown

  1. Drop an unbroken yolk of an egg into each depression.

  2. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and dot with butter.

  3. Bake until the egg sets, then remove from the oven.

  4. Cover with stiffly beaten egg whites, dust with salt and white pepper.

  5. Return to the oven and brown.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Provides the main body and savory flavor of each cake.
Eggs
Yolks set in the centre while the whites foam and brown on top.
Cream
Adds moisture so the ham mixture binds softly rather than drying out.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the ham and butter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the surface brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Keep each yolk unbroken and bake only until the egg sets. An intact yolk stays a distinct centre. Overbaking pushes the yolk proteins too far, making it dry, chalky and firm instead of tender.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, parsley, cream, egg, pepper, 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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