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Ham-and-egg Lunch Loaf

A loaf made from chopped ham, corned beef or salt pork, crackers, and eggs, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Ham-and-egg Lunch Loaf

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the remnants of cold boiled ham, corned beef, or salt pork.

  2. Add crushed crackers and 3 to 6 eggs, depending on the amount of meat. Mix well.

  3. Pour into a round baking pan or empty spice box.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until set, then let cool before slicing for serving.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Ham + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,638 recipes

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

  3. Ham + beeftop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,729 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pork + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,387 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the chopped meat and crackers and set the loaf firm when baked.
Crushed crackers
Absorb moisture and add body so the loaf holds together when sliced.
Cold boiled ham
Provides the main meat flavor and bulk of the loaf.

The step that matters

Bake until set, then let cool before slicing. Egg proteins firm as they heat, so the loaf needs to be fully set before cutting. Cutting while hot can leave it crumbly because the structure has not yet stiffened as it cools.

“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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