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Minced Ham with Eggs

A dish of minced boiled ham served with poached eggs, cooked in butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Minced Ham with Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the boiled ham very fine.

Make the ham mixture

  1. In a stew pan, melt a little butter and add a little flour; brown it.

  2. Add the minced ham and a spoonful of stock; stir and heat until hot.

Serve

  1. Serve with poached eggs on top.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Boiled ham
Provides the savoury meat base that the mixture is built around.
Butter
Carries flavour and adds richness to the cooking base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and browns to give the base body and a toasty note.
Stock
Moistens the minced ham and loosens the mixture so it heats through evenly.
Eggs
Poached on top to add a soft, rich finish that contrasts with the ham.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in butter. Cooking the flour until it turns golden removes its raw taste and builds a nutty flavour. Stopping too early leaves a pasty taste, while going too far scorches it and gives a bitter edge.

“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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