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Egg Sauce

A sauce made from a hard‑boiled egg, butter, flour, salt, pepper, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the egg

  1. Boil the egg for 10 minutes.

  2. Place the egg in cold water for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove the shell and chop the egg finely.

Make the sauce

  1. In a small saucepan, cream the butter.

  2. Beat in the flour, salt, and pepper.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and cook for 2 minutes.

  4. Add the chopped egg.

  5. Serve.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Butter
Creams with the flour and carries flavour, giving the sauce richness and a smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water into a smooth sauce as its starch swells on heating.
Hard-boiled egg
Chopped into the sauce, it adds texture and a mild, rich flavour.

The step that matters

Beat in the flour before adding the water. Flour mixed into melted or creamed butter coats the starch granules, so they disperse evenly when liquid is added. Adding the water to dry flour without this step can leave 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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