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Egg Jumbles

Egg Jumbles are lightly whisked eggs cooked with ham, herbs, and spices, served on toasted or fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Egg Jumbles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl and whisk them lightly.

  2. Add the chopped ham, herbs, pepper, and salt to the eggs.

Cook the eggs

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Pour in the egg mixture and cook, stirring almost continually, until set.

Serve

  1. Toast or fry the bread slices until golden, removing the crusts if fried.

  2. Spread the egg mixture on the prepared bread and serve hot.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a soft, creamy mass that binds the topping together.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the eggs and helps keep them from sticking.
Ham or cooked bacon
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the egg mixture.
Bread
Provides a crisp, golden base for the warm egg mixture.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs while they cook. Constant gentle stirring over medium heat keeps the proteins from setting in large lumps, giving the soft, creamy texture that makes the jumbles. Cooking too hard or leaving them unstirred can make them dry and rubbery.

“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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