Name: Ham Cakes, Baked, for Breakfast or Tea
Ingredients: remnants of boiled ham; bread; milk; eggs; pepper; butter

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Ham Cakes, Baked, for Breakfast or Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Chop the ham finely.
Soak a large piece of bread in milk for each person.

Make the mixture

Mix the soaked bread with a beaten egg and pepper.
Combine the ham with the bread mixture.

Bake

Transfer to a buttered pudding dish.
Bake until golden brown.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread: Soaked in milk, it forms a soft, moist base that holds the cakes together.
Eggs: The beaten egg binds the bread and ham so the cakes set firmly when baked.
Milk: Soaks into the bread, adding moisture so the cakes stay tender rather than dry.
Butter: Greases the pudding dish, helping the cakes release and encouraging golden browning.
Remnants of boiled ham: Provides the savoury, meaty flavour at the centre of the dish.

“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.