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Breakfast

Entree or Breakfast Dish

A breakfast dish of smoked ham, tomatoes, eggs, onion or cheese, cooked in butter and served on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Entree or Breakfast Dish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the tomatoes and chop them finely with the smoked ham.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix them with the chopped onion or cheese.

Cook and serve

  1. In a pan, melt a little butter and add the mixture.

  2. Simmer for 3 minutes.

  3. Spread the mixture on small rounds of buttered toast.

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. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  2. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set when heated, binding the filling together into a soft, cohesive omelette.
Smoked ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour and a chewy texture to the filling.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and gentle acidity, lightly softening as they cook with the egg.
Onion or cheese
Adds savoury flavour; cheese also melts and enriches the set egg.

The step that matters

Simmering the egg mixture. Eggs set quickly and turn rubbery or dry if cooked too hard or too long. Gentle heat keeps the omelette tender and moist while it firms up.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, egg, onion, butter):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, egg, onion, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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