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Ham or Tongue Toast

A toasted bread topped with a mixture of chopped ham or tongue, hard‑boiled eggs, butter, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Ham or Tongue Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Toast the slice of bread.

  2. Butter the toast.

  3. Chop the ham or tongue and hard-boiled eggs very fine.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine the meat, eggs, butter, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Heat the mixture until thoroughly hot.

Serve

  1. Spread the mixture on the toast.

  2. Serve immediately.

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

Eggs
Bind the filling and add rich, creamy body when chopped and heated.
Ham or tongue
Provides the savory, meaty flavor and chewy texture of the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and keeping the filling moist.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture until thoroughly hot. Eggs must be heated through so the filling is safely warm and evenly cooked, while gentle heat keeps the egg from turning dry or rubbery.

“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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