Name: Baked Ham with Riced Eggs
Ingredients: 1 inch thick slice of ham; milk (enough to cover the ham); 4 hard boiled eggs; pepper to taste; parsley for garnish

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Ham with Riced Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the ham

Soak the ham slice in warm water for 15 minutes.
Remove the ham from the water and place it in a baking dish.
Add enough milk to cover the ham.

Bake

Cover the baking dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) for about 50 minutes.

Serve

Remove the ham from the liquid and place it on a serving plate.
Rice the hard boiled eggs over the ham and season with pepper.
Make gravy from the liquid in the baking dish and pour it over the ham.
Garnish with parsley.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,765 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together26,984 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham: Provides the main meat, which is softened by soaking and gently baked in milk.
Milk: Covers the ham during baking, keeping it moist and forming the base for the gravy.
Hard boiled eggs: Add a firm, crumbly texture and richness when riced over the warm ham.