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Eggs Poached with Sauce of Minced Ham

Poached eggs served with a sauce of minced ham, gherkin, onion, parsley, and citrus juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Eggs Poached with Sauce of Minced Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mince the ham, gherkin, onion, and parsley together.

  2. Add salt and pepper, then stew the mixture for 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Poach the eggs as directed.

  2. Serve the sauce hot over the poached eggs.

  3. Squeeze the juice of half a Seville orange or lemon over the eggs before serving.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + orangetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together680 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + orangetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs (in the method)
Form the main body of the dish, setting when poached to hold their shape.
Boiled ham
Provides savoury, salty flavour and meaty body to the sauce.
Gherkin
Adds sharp, acidic bite that cuts through the richness of the sauce.
Seville orange or lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma to finish the eggs.

The step that matters

Stew the sauce gently for 15 minutes. Stewing softens the minced ham, gherkin, onion, and parsley and blends their flavours into a cohesive sauce. Boiling too hard can toughen the ham and make the sauce dry or uneven, so keep it at a gentle simmer.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, parsley, pepper. 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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