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Ham, with Eggs and Vegetable Marrow

A dish of broiled ham, poached eggs, and boiled marrow served with parsley sauce and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Ham, with Eggs and Vegetable Marrow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the components

  1. Broil the ham and cut it into even-sized pieces.

  2. Boil or steam the marrow after dividing it into pieces larger than the ham.

  3. Poach the eggs.

Assemble and serve

  1. On a hot dish, lay slices of fried bread, then place the ham on top.

  2. Put an egg on each piece of marrow and arrange them around the dish.

  3. Sprinkle the eggs with chopped parsley and pour the parsley sauce over the ham.

  4. For variation, add green peas on the pieces of marrow and 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. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  4. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Provides the savoury, meaty centrepiece of the dish.
Eggs
Provide rich texture and a runny yolk that moistens the dish when broken.
Vegetable marrow
Gives a mild, tender vegetable base that holds the other components.
Parsley sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy, savoury coating over the ham.
Fried bread or toast
Gives a crisp, golden base that soaks up juices from the ham and sauce.

The step that matters

Poach the eggs. Eggs cooked in simmering water set their whites around the yolk; if the water boils hard or the eggs are added too late, the whites spread and break apart, leaving a ragged, overcooked result.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

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