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Ham Toast

A toasted bread topped with a mixture of minced ham, anchovy, spices, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,330 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Ham Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ham mixture

  1. Mince the cooked ham and anchovy together.

  2. Add cayenne pepper and ground mace to the mixture.

  3. Beat the eggs and mix them with the ham mixture.

  4. Add just enough milk to keep the mixture moist.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat the mixture until hot and serve on small rounds of 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. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Ham + anchovytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together256 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Anchovy + peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when heated, giving it a soft, cohesive texture.
Cooked ham
Provides the savoury, meaty body of the dish.
Milk
Adds moisture so the mixture stays soft rather than drying out when heated.
Anchovy
Adds a salty, savoury depth of flavour to the ham mixture.

The step that matters

Adding the milk. Milk should be added only as much as needed to keep the mixture moist. Too much makes the egg mixture loose and watery, so it will not hold together on the toast when heated.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, anchovy, pepper, egg, milk. 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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