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Egg and Ham Patties

Bread shapes filled with minced ham and brown sauce, topped with poached eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Egg and Ham Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Cut a slice of stale bread two inches thick and cut out four or five round pieces using a 2-inch cutter.

  2. Use a smaller cutter to press nearly through the larger pieces, then remove the inner bread with a small knife.

  3. Heat a large pan of boiling lard and fry the bread pieces until light brown.

  4. Drain the fried bread on a clean cloth and set aside.

Make the ham filling

  1. In a pan, combine the minced ham and brown sauce, stirring over heat for a few minutes.

  2. Add a small amount of cayenne pepper and lemon juice to the ham mixture.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill the bread shapes with the ham mixture and top each with a poached egg.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. 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

Stale bread
Forms a crisp, golden case that holds the filling when fried.
Lean ham
Provides the savoury, meaty filling that forms the body of the dish.
Brown sauce
Adds moisture and rich flavour that binds the minced ham together.
Eggs
Set on top as a soft, creamy topping that enriches the filling.

The step that matters

Frying the bread until light brown. Bread absorbs fat quickly and can turn greasy or burn at the wrong temperature. Frying in very hot lard sets a crisp, sealed shell that holds its shape and resists soaking up the filling.

“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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