Skip to main content
Main

Ham or Tongue Toast

A toasted bread spread with butter, ham or tongue, eggs, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Ham or Tongue Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Toast the bread and butter it on both sides.

Make the filling

  1. Grate the ham or tongue and place it in a saucepan.

  2. Chop the hard-boiled eggs finely and add them to the saucepan.

  3. Mix in a little butter, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Heat the mixture until hot, then spread it thickly on the buttered toast.

Serve

  1. Serve while hot.

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

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

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Chopped finely, they form the bulk of the filling and give it a soft, rich body.
Ham or tongue
Grated, it supplies the savoury meaty flavour that carries the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling and browns the toast.
Thick slice of bread
Provides a sturdy, crisp base that holds the warm filling without going soggy.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture until hot, then spread it thickly on the buttered toast.. The filling must be heated through so the eggs and meat are safely hot and the butter stays fluid. Spreading it while hot keeps it soft and spreadable, and the buttered toast helps prevent the bread from soaking up moisture.

“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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes