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Ham Scramble

A quick egg dish with ham, milk, butter, pepper, and salt, cooked in a saucepan and served on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Ham Scramble

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Stir in the pepper, salt, and minced ham.

Cook and serve

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk and butter.

  2. Stir in the egg mixture and cook until set.

  3. Serve on 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

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

  3. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + milktop 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

Eggs
Set into a soft, tender structure as they cook, forming the body of the scramble.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the eggs creamy rather than dry.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps keep the eggs from sticking and burning.
Cooked ham
Adds savory, salty flavor and a chewy bite throughout the eggs.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg mixture and cook until set. Eggs turn from liquid to firm through protein coagulation, and overheating makes them tough, dry, and rubbery. Cooking gently and removing them while still slightly glossy keeps them tender.

“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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