Skip to main content

Ham and Poached Eggs with Cream Sauce

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Ham and Poached Eggs with Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place a piece of thinly sliced boiled ham on a round of buttered toast.

  2. Top the ham with a poached egg.

  3. Cover with a highly seasoned cream sauce or Hollandaise sauce.

  4. Alternatively, use a slice of tongue, or a well-seasoned thick tomato sauce or curry sauce.

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 + creamtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Ham + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together348 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Cream + tomatotop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, egg, cream):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, egg, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes