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Ham Toast

A toasted bread topped with a mixture of boiled ham, milk, butter, eggs, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Ham Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ham mixture

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk and butter and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the minced ham, pepper, and beaten eggs.

  3. Stir constantly until the mixture thickens.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on squares of buttered 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set and thicken the mixture as they cook, giving it a creamy, spoonable body.
Boiled ham
Provides savory flavor and substance as the main filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce and flavor to the buttered toast.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken into a smooth mixture.

The step that matters

Stir constantly until the mixture thickens. Egg proteins set with heat, and if the mixture sits still over direct heat it can curdle or cook unevenly on the bottom. Constant stirring keeps the heat distributed so the eggs thicken smoothly.

“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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