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Breakfast

Something for Breakfast

A breakfast dish of ham, eggs, and potato formed into cakes, coated in egg and cracker crumbs, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Something for Breakfast

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop leftover ham or bacon and eggs finely in a wooden bowl.

  2. Add mashed or chopped potato and bacon gravy if available; mix well.

  3. Form the mixture into flat cakes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each cake in raw egg.

  2. Coat each cake with cracker crumbs.

  3. Fry in oil or butter until light brown on both sides.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 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. Ham + eggtop 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. Ham + potatotop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together127 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Leftover eggs
Bind the mixture and help the cakes hold their shape.
Mashed or cold chopped potato
Adds bulk and a soft, moist interior to the cakes.
Raw egg
Forms a coating that helps the crumbs stick and browns during frying.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Fry until light brown on both sides. Frying over moderate heat browns the egg and crumb coating through the Maillard reaction, creating flavour and a crisp crust. The coating can burn before the cake heats through if the heat is too high, so cook at a steady medium heat and turn once.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, egg, butter):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, egg, butter. 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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