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Dundee Eggs

A dish of boiled eggs coated with a ham and breadcrumb mixture, chilled, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Dundee Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs for 25 minutes, then place them in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Peel the boiled eggs and coat them with the ham mixture.

Make the coating

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped ham, bread crumbs, milk, cayenne, and mustard.

  2. Bind the mixture with the raw egg.

Fry and serve

  1. Chill the coated eggs in a cold place for 1 hour.

  2. Fry the eggs in hot deep fat for 3 minutes.

  3. Serve cold.

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

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

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  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

Eggs
Form the structure of the dish, with the boiled whites and yolks wrapped in the coating.
Chopped ham
Adds savory flavor and body to the coating mixture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and help the coating hold together around the eggs.
Raw egg
Binds the coating mixture so it sticks to the boiled eggs.
Milk
Moistens the bread crumbs and ham, keeping the coating soft.

The step that matters

Chill the coated eggs before frying. Chilling firms the coating so it sets and holds its shape. Without it, the moist ham mixture can loosen and slide off the egg in hot fat.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, ham, bread, milk, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, ham, bread, milk, pepper. 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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