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Beauregard Eggs

A layered toast dish with boiled eggs, white sauce, and yolk, seasoned with salt and pepper.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs for 15 minutes.

  2. Chop the egg whites finely and rub the yolks through a sieve separately.

Make the white sauce

  1. In a saucepan, bring the milk to a boil.

  2. In a bowl, rub the butter and corn starch together, then add to the boiling milk.

  3. Stir in the chopped egg whites, salt, and pepper.

Assemble and serve

  1. Butter the toast and place it on a hot platter.

  2. Cover each slice of toast with a layer of the white sauce, then a layer of grated yolks, followed by another layer of whites and yolks.

  3. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and place in the oven for a moment 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. Corn + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together349 recipes

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

  3. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 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

Eggs
Whites are folded into the sauce and yolks form the layered topping, giving body and richness.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce that holds the layers together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, carrying the flavor and thickening with the starch.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and coats the toast.
Toast
Provides a crisp base that holds the sauce and egg layers.

The step that matters

Adding the starch-butter mixture to the boiling milk. Corn starch must be fully blended with the butter and then whisked into hot liquid so it gelatinizes evenly; added lumpy or to cool milk, it leaves clumps and a thin, uneven sauce.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, corn, milk, butter, pepper):

  1. Lima beansfits about as well
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Almondfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, corn, milk, butter, pepper. 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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