Name: Fried Ham
Ingredients: slices of ham; sweet or sour milk; eggs; butter; pepper

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fried Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Soak the ham slices in sweet or sour milk for 2–3 hours.
Remove the ham from the milk and fry until cooked.

Serve

Place the fried ham on a platter.
Crack eggs into the hot gravy and pour over each slice of ham.
Serve immediately.
For broiled ham, cook until done, then add butter and pepper before serving on a hot platter.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 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

Slices of ham: Provide the main meat, which is softened by soaking and then cooked through.
Sweet or sour milk: Soaks the ham, adding moisture and a mild tenderising effect before frying.
Eggs: Cooked into the hot gravy, they set and add richness to the dish.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the broiled ham at serving.

“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.