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Eggs with Ham and Tomatoes

Scrambled eggs cooked with ham, tomatoes, parsley, and butter, served on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Eggs with Ham and Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a skillet with the ham and tomatoes over medium heat.

  2. Once hot, add salt and pepper, then stir in the eggs beaten with milk.

  3. Stir continuously from the bottom until the eggs are firm.

  4. Add the parsley and serve on slices of buttered toast.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Parsley + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together498 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Tomato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into soft curds that give the scrambled dish its body and structure.
Ham
Adds savory, salty flavor and a firm, chewy bite among the soft eggs.
Thick stewed tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that lightly flavor the eggs as they cook.
Milk
Dilutes the eggs slightly, keeping the scramble softer and more tender.

The step that matters

Stir continuously from the bottom until the eggs are firm. Eggs set quickly over direct heat. Constant stirring keeps curds small and tender, while leaving them still can scorch the bottom and leave them rubbery.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, ham, parsley, butter, walnut, milk. 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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