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Ham and Egg Patties

A patty made from stale bread, minced ham, and eggs, fried and topped with a poached egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Ham and Egg Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Remove the crust from the stale quarter loaf and cut the crumb into 1.5‑inch thick slices.

  2. Stamp the slices into rounds the size of an egg‑cup top and make a small incision inside each ring, 0.5 inches from the edge.

Fry and fill

  1. Fry the bread pieces in hot fat until lightly browned, about 3–4 minutes.

  2. Scrape out the middle of each round and fill with 2 teaspoons of minced ham.

  3. Top each with a poached egg.

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. Ham + eggtop 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

Stale bread loaf
Forms the crisp, sturdy case that holds the ham and egg together.
Eggs
Set to a soft, rich topping that binds the patty when cooked.
Minced ham
Adds savoury flavour and substance to the filling inside each round.

The step that matters

Frying the bread until lightly browned. Browning the bread in hot fat dries and crisps the surface, so the case stays firm enough to hold the filling and egg without going soggy.

“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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