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Cheese and Ham Toast

A toasted bread topped with melted cheese and thin slices of slightly fried ham.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,426 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese and Ham Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Melt the chopped cheese in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the hot milk and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Assemble and serve

  1. Prepare buttered toast cut into broad fingers.

  2. Place thin slices of slightly fried ham on the toast.

  3. Spread the cheese mixture thickly over the ham and serve 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. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cheese + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Milk + hamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,089 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chopped cheese
Melts into a smooth, rich sauce that coats the ham and toast.
Hot milk
Loosens the melted cheese so it spreads thickly and stays creamy.
Thin slices of ham
Adds savory, salty meat flavor beneath the cheese layer.
Buttered toast
Provides a crisp, absorbent base that holds the topping.

The step that matters

Melting the cheese over medium heat. High heat can make cheese seize, turn grainy, or separate into oil and solids. Gentle heat, with the hot milk added after melting, keeps the sauce smooth and cohesive.

“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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