Skip to main content
Breakfast

Broiled Ham and Eggs

A dish of broiled ham slices topped with poached eggs, seasoned with pepper, butter, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Broiled Ham and Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Cut slices of cooked ham of equal size.

  2. Broil the ham on a grill over a clear fire.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the ham on a hot dish and season with pepper.

  2. Spread each slice with a mixture of melted butter and a little mustard.

  3. Top each slice with a neatly trimmed 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. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Serves as the savory base, and broiling over direct heat browns its surface and concentrates its flavor.
Eggs
Form a soft, rich topping that adds moisture and richness to each slice.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps spread the mustard evenly over the ham.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavor that balances the richness of the butter and egg.

The step that matters

Poaching the eggs until the whites are set. Egg white proteins coagulate as they heat, so an egg must be cooked until its white is firm before placing it on the ham. Otherwise it spreads and runs across the slice, and trimming it neatly becomes impossible.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes