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To Fry Bacon or Ham and Eggs

A simple fried dish of bacon or ham with eggs cooked in the same pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

To Fry Bacon or Ham and Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the bacon

  1. Cut the bacon into very thin slices, no more than ¼ inch thick.

  2. Heat a pan without butter or dripping and fry the bacon, turning constantly.

  3. Once done, transfer the bacon to a hot dish.

Cook the eggs

  1. Break the eggs into separate cups and gently place them in the pan to keep their shape.

  2. Cook the eggs until the whites are set, then carefully lift them out and place them on the bacon.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Renders fat that cooks the pan and adds salty, savoury flavour and crisp browning.
Eggs
Set proteins form the structure and creamy texture of the dish once cooked.

The step that matters

Cooking the eggs until the whites are set. Egg whites set at moderate heat while the yolks stay soft. Cooking too hot or too long makes the whites rubbery and toughens the yolks, and breaking the eggs into cups first helps them keep their shape in the pan.

“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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