Skip to main content
Main

Disguised Ham

A toasted bread topped with grated ham mixed with egg yolks, seasoned, and browned under a broiler.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Disguised Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham filling

  1. Grate the cold boiled ham, ensuring you have twice as much lean as fat.

  2. Season the ham with powdered mace and ground cloves.

  3. Beat the yolks of the soft-boiled eggs and mix them with the ham.

Assemble and brown

  1. Spread the mixture over slices of buttered toast while hot.

  2. Brush the top with egg white and brown it under a broiler.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled ham
Provides the savory meaty base of the filling.
Soft-boiled egg yolks
Bind the ham into a moist, spreadable mixture and add richness.
Egg white
Brushed on top, it helps the surface brown and set under the broiler.
Bread
Serves as the crisp, buttered base that holds the hot filling.

The step that matters

Brown the top under the broiler. Egg white browns quickly under direct high heat, so the topping can scorch before the filling is warmed through. Watch it closely and remove it as soon as the surface turns golden.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes