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Panned Eggs

Panned eggs are eggs baked in a ham and breadcrumb mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Panned Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the base

  1. Make a mince of chopped ham, fine bread crumbs, pepper, coarse sea salt, and melted butter.

  2. Moisten the mixture to a soft paste with milk.

  3. Half fill patty pans with the mixture.

Bake

  1. Break an egg on top of each patty pan.

  2. Dust with pepper and coarse sea salt, then sprinkle with powdered cracker crumbs.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about eight minutes.

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

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

  3. Ham + breadtop 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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a soft custard-like topping that firms as the eggs cook.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and butter to form a paste that holds the base together.
Milk
Moistens the crumbs and ham so the base stays tender rather than dry.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and helps bind the mince while adding flavour.
Powdered cracker crumbs
Dry crumbs sprinkled on top that brown in the oven for a crisp finish.

The step that matters

Half fill the patty pans. Filling too full leaves no room for the egg to sit on top, and the mixture can spill over or bake unevenly. Keeping the base shallow gives the egg a defined bed to set in.

“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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