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Creamed Eggs

A dish of boiled eggs mixed with a butter‑flour‑milk sauce, served on toast and topped with bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Creamed Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs for 20 minutes, then transfer them to cold water.

  2. Once cooled, chop the egg whites and grate the yolks.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter, stir in the flour, and cook for 1 minute.

  2. Gradually add the milk, stirring until the sauce thickens.

  3. Stir in the chopped egg whites and season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Prepare slightly buttered rounds of toast.

  2. Place a large spoonful of the egg mixture on each toast and sprinkle with grated yolks.

  3. Garnish with crisped bacon strips.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg whites add body to the sauce while grated yolks give a crumbly topping.
Butter
Fat that enriches the sauce and carries flavour in the roux.
All-purpose flour
Starch that thickens the butter and milk into a smooth white sauce.
Milk
Liquid that, with the flour, forms the body of the creamed sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the roux. Adding liquid gradually while stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

“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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