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Egg Toasts

Egg Toasts are slices of buttered bread topped with a spiced tomato sauce and chopped hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Egg Toasts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Chop the cold hard-boiled eggs.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the sauce and tomato purée, and season with spiced pepper.

  3. Add the chopped eggs and mix well.

  4. Cover the saucepan and heat over a double boiler until hot.

Serve

  1. Spread the mixture over slices of buttered bread.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the main body and substance of the filling once chopped.
White or brown sauce
Forms a smooth, moist base that binds the chopped eggs together.
Tomato purée
Adds concentrated tomato flavour and a little colour and acidity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heating over a double boiler. Gentle, indirect heat warms the sauce and eggs through without scorching the sauce or making the egg whites rubbery. Keeping the saucepan covered traps moisture so the mixture stays creamy rather than drying out.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sauce, pepper, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Tomatothe original
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sauce, pepper, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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