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Baltimore Toast

A toasted bread topped with ham, butter, cream, herbs, and cheese, served warm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baltimore Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Stir in the cream and then add the chopped ham.

  3. Mix in the grated lemon peel, mixed mustard, powdered herbs, nutmeg, and cayenne.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool slightly before stirring in the egg and grated cheese.

Serve

  1. Serve warm on 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mustard + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Mustard + cheesetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the warm mixture together and thickens it as it sets gently.
Cheese
Melts into the mixture to add richness and a savoury, stretchy body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base and carries the seasonings.
Ham
Provides the savoury, salty meat flavour at the centre of the dish.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool slightly before adding the egg. If the mixture is too hot, the egg can scramble instead of blending smoothly and thickening gently. Cooling it slightly lets the egg enrich the mixture evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, egg, butter, cream, mustard, nutmeg, cheese):

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, egg, butter, cream, mustard, nutmeg, cheese. 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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