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Egg Gems

Eggs baked in buttered pans with chopped meat, breadcrumbs, butter, milk, and optional cheese.

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

Egg Gems

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Fill and top

  1. Mix the chopped cold meat with the bread crumbs, pepper, salt, butter, and milk.

  2. Fill buttered gem pans with the mixture.

  3. Carefully break an egg on top of each filled pan.

  4. Season with additional pepper and salt, then sprinkle fine cracker crumbs on top.

  5. If desired, add a little grated cheese to the cracker crumbs before baking.

Bake

  1. Bake for 8 minutes.

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

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  5. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set when baked, forming the soft, cohesive centre of each gem.
Cold meat
Provides the savoury base and bulk that the egg sits on.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the meat mixture so it holds its shape.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps keep the mixture moist in the pan.

The step that matters

Carefully break an egg on top of each filled pan. Egg yolks and whites set quickly and can break or spread if the shell is cracked badly or the egg lands unevenly, so gentle placement keeps each yolk intact on the base.

“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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