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Beauregard Eggs

Layered eggs with toast, white sauce, and yolk ribbons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Beauregard Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the eggs for 20 minutes, then remove the shells.

  2. Chop the egg whites finely and rub the yolks through a sieve; do not mix them.

  3. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, rub the butter and cornstarch together, then add to the boiling milk.

  2. Add the chopped egg whites, salt, and pepper to the milk mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the toast on a hot dish and cover with a layer of the white sauce.

  2. Add a thin layer of yolks, then the remaining whites, and finally the rest of the yolks.

  3. Sprinkle the top with a little salt and pepper, then place in the oven for a few minutes before serving.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the body of the white sauce and provides its liquid base.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth, spoonable white sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow flavour to the sauce.
Eggs
Whites add chopped texture and yolks add richness and colour to the layers.

The step that matters

Thickening the white sauce. Cornstarch only thickens once it is heated in liquid, so the milk must be boiling when the butter and cornstarch mixture goes in. Rubbing them together first helps prevent lumps, and stirring keeps the starch evenly dispersed as the sauce 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.

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