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Poached Eggs and Ham

A dish of minced boiled ham mixed with eggs, cooked in butter, served with buttered toast and 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 parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Poached Eggs and Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ham and egg base

  1. Mince the cold boiled ham finely and season with salt, pepper, parsley, and butter.

  2. Stir in the beaten eggs and cook in a frying pan over medium heat, stirring constantly for about 5 minutes to prevent browning.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a platter, shaping it nicely around the sides and flat on top.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange small slices of buttered toast around the sides.

  2. Poach the desired number of eggs and place them over the minced meat, sprinkling each egg lightly with salt and pepper.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  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. Butter + eggtop 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
Beaten eggs bind the minced ham into a set, sliceable base as they cook.
Cold boiled ham
Provides the main savoury meat flavour and the bulk of the base.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the seasoned ham mixture.

The step that matters

Stirring the ham and eggs over medium heat. Constant stirring keeps the eggs from scorching or browning on the pan bottom, which would add an unwanted toasted flavour and uneven texture to the base.

“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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