Skip to main content
Main

Fried Eggs

Eggs fried in ham fat, served alone or atop the cooked ham.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Egg and ham 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 ↓

Fried Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the ham in a skillet until cooked.

  2. Drop the eggs one by one into the hot fat.

  3. Spoon the hot fat over the eggs until the whites are set.

  4. Serve the eggs alone or on top of the ham.

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. Egg + hamtop 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

Eggs
Their proteins set when heated, firming the whites while the yolks stay soft.
Ham
Adds savory, salty flavor and a chewy texture beneath the eggs.
Fat for frying
Conducts heat evenly to cook the eggs and adds richness and browning.

The step that matters

Spooning hot fat over the eggs until the whites are set. Hot fat cooks the egg white on top without flipping the egg. Stopping too early leaves the white runny and translucent, while overcooking makes the yolk firm and dry. Heat is what coagulates the egg proteins, so the fat must stay hot.

“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.

More fried eggs recipes

with Bacon 8Breaded 4and Bacon 4with Tomatoes 4with Tomato Sauce 3 See all 85 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes