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Pan Broiled Ham with Eggs

A slice of ham is pan‑broiled and poached eggs are cooked in its rendered fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Pan Broiled Ham with Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Trim and wipe the slice of ham.

  2. Place the ham in a frying pan and cover with lukewarm water.

  3. Let it stand for 30 minutes.

  4. Drain the ham and wipe it with a towel.

Brown and poach

  1. Heat the pan until it is hissing hot, then lay the ham in and brown it quickly on both sides.

  2. Remove the ham to a serving platter.

  3. Break the desired number of eggs into a saucer one at a time and slip them carefully into the rendered ham fat.

  4. Cover the eggs with boiling water and place a lid on the pan.

  5. Let the eggs poach until the whites are firm.

Serve

  1. Arrange the poached eggs around the ham and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  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. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Provides savory meaty flavor, and its rendered fat is used to cook the eggs.
Eggs
Set into firm whites when poached, forming the main soft-textured topping.

The step that matters

Poaching the eggs until the whites are firm. Eggs cooked in too little water or for too short a time stay runny or spread out, while overcooking makes the yolks hard. Covering the pan traps steam so the whites set evenly over the top.

“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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