Name: Baked Eggs
Ingredients: ½ pound lean boiled ham, minced; ½ pound cracker crumbs; 4 eggs; salt to taste; cayenne pepper to taste; butter

Why it works: Ham and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,475 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Baked Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Mix the minced ham and cracker crumbs in a bowl.
Moisten the mixture and spread it on a baking dish.
Scoop out four round holes in the mixture.
Crack an egg into each hole.

Bake and serve

Season with salt, cayenne pepper, and add small pieces of butter.
Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the eggs are cooked.
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.

Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,058 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

Eggs: Set when baked, forming the cooked centre of each well in the crumb base.
Cracker crumbs: Absorb moisture and bind with the ham to form a firm base around the eggs.
Lean boiled ham: Provides savoury flavour and body to the crumb base.
Butter: Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and promotes gentle browning.

The step that matters

Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the eggs are cooked.. Egg whites set at lower temperatures than yolks, and overbaking makes yolks dry and chalky. Watch for set whites with yolks still soft, since residual heat keeps cooking them after leaving the oven.

“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.