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Fried Ham and Eggs

A dish of fried ham slices served with eggs cooked in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and egg 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 Ham and Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the ham

  1. Fry the ham until cooked, then remove it from the pan.

  2. Pour out the excess fat, leaving the sediments in the pan.

Fry the eggs

  1. Add some lard to the pan and heat it until boiling hot.

  2. Carefully crack the eggs into the hot lard and fry them.

Serve

  1. Serve the eggs around the ham on a plate.

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. Ham + eggtop 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

Slices of ham
Provide the savory meat base that the eggs are served around.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and flavor to the eggs.
Eggs
Set in the hot fat to form the main fried component of the dish.

The step that matters

Heating the lard until boiling hot before cracking in the eggs. Fat must be very hot before the eggs go in, so the whites set quickly and crisp at the edges instead of spreading and absorbing grease. Carefully lowering the eggs also prevents spattering from the hot fat.

“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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