Skip to main content
Main

Beead-toast

A toast topped with a creamy sauce of butter, flour, cream, minced cooked fowl, and chopped hard-boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Beead-toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Reduce the water until it is half the original amount.

  2. Strain the gravy and let it cool.

  3. Skim off the fat and place the gravy in a clean saucepan.

  4. Add cream, butter, and flour to the saucepan and stir until boiling.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the minced fowl and chopped eggs, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  2. Heat the mixture until ready to serve.

  3. Serve the mixture over hot toast.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Adds richness and flavor to the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the cream and gravy into a smooth sauce.
Cream
Adds body and softness to the sauce.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add texture and body to the creamed mixture.
Cooked fowl
Provides the main meaty texture of the dish.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour, cream and butter until boiling. Flour must be fully cooked into the hot liquid, or the sauce stays pasty and tastes raw. Keep stirring so lumps do not form as it thickens.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes