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Poached Eggs and Ham

A dish of minced ham mixed with eggs, cooked in a pan, served with buttered toast and poached eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 mixture

  1. In a bowl, mix the minced ham with salt, pepper, parsley, and a bit of butter.

  2. Stir in the two beaten eggs until well combined.

  3. Heat a frying pan over medium heat and pour in the ham and egg mixture.

  4. Stir constantly for about five minutes to prevent browning.

Plate and serve

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

  2. Arrange small slices of buttered toast around the sides of the meat.

  3. Poach the desired number of eggs and place them on top of the minced meat.

  4. Sprinkle each poached 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
Bind the minced ham together and set into a firm, sliceable mass when cooked.
Cold boiled ham
Provides the savoury meat base and the main flavour of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavour to the ham mixture.

The step that matters

Stirring the ham and egg mixture in the pan. Constant stirring over medium heat keeps the egg from catching and browning on the pan base. Egg proteins set quickly, so letting it sit can cause sticking and an uneven, scorched texture.

“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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