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Jambon Ou Lard & Pain Réti.—Ham or Bacon Toast

A toasted bread topped with ham or bacon, dipped in egg and herbs, fried until golden.

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 ↓

Jambon Ou Lard & Pain Réti.—Ham or Bacon Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bread into slices about the size of two fingers.

  2. Top each slice with small pieces of ham or bacon.

  3. Dip the ham or bacon in a mixture of beaten egg, parsley, green onions, and pepper.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the topped bread over low heat until golden.

  2. Serve with a clear acidulous sauce of your choice.

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. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the parsley and onion mixture so it coats the ham or bacon and sticks to the bread.
Ham or bacon
Provides the savoury, salty flavour and fat that the toast is built around.
Bread
Forms the crisp base that absorbs the egg mixture and browns in the pan.

The step that matters

Fry over low heat until golden. Low heat lets the egg coating set and the bread cook through before the outside darkens. High heat would brown the surface quickly and leave the centre undercooked.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, ham, egg, parsley, pepper, sauce. 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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