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Patties with Onions

Ham patties with onions made by mixing bread crumbs, ham, onion, and optional egg, then baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Patties with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Moisten the bread crumbs with a little milk.

  2. Mix the moistened bread crumbs with the cooked ham and chopped onion, if using.

  3. Spoon the mixture into gem pans.

Top and bake

  1. If desired, break an egg over each gem or chop cold hard-boiled egg and sprinkle on top.

  2. Scatter a few crumbs on top, add bits of butter, and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until browned.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb milk and bind with the ham to give the patties a soft, tender body.
Cooked ham
Supplies the main savory flavor and the bulk of each patty.
Egg
Optional; sets during baking to help bind the mixture and add richness.
Butter
Adds fat that promotes browning on top and enriches flavor.

The step that matters

Bake until browned. Baking at a moderate oven heat until the top browns sets the mixture and develops flavor through browning. Pulling the patties too early leaves them soft and pale, while overbaking can dry them out.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, ham, egg, butter, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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