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Ham Toast

A skillet-cooked ham and egg mixture served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ham Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ham filling

  1. Melt the butter in a skillet.

  2. Add the minced onion and chopped ham; stir and cook for 3-4 minutes.

  3. Beat the eggs with water until light, then add the minced parsley.

  4. Pour the egg mixture into the skillet; stir quickly over low heat until creamy.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture heaped on hot 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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  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

Eggs
Set into a creamy, soft mass that binds the ham and onion together.
Cooked ham
Provides the savory, meaty flavor and chewy bite of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavor of the onion and ham in the skillet.
Minced onion
Adds sharp aromatic sweetness that deepens as it cooks in butter.

The step that matters

Stir the eggs quickly over low heat. Eggs turn from creamy to dry, rubbery curds if overcooked or heated too hard. Gentle, constant stirring over low heat keeps the proteins tender and the texture smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, egg, parsley. 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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