Name: Egg Balls on Toast
Ingredients: 6 hard-boiled eggs; 6 slices of bread; butter for spreading; deviled ham; 1 pint of thin white sauce

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Egg Balls on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

Prepare 6 slices of bread and butter them. Toast until hot.
Spread deviled ham on each slice of toast, making a slight depression in the center.

Prepare the eggs and sauce

Hard boil the eggs, remove the yolks whole, and chop the whites. Keep both warm.
Make 1 pint of thin white sauce and stir in the chopped egg whites.

Assemble and serve

Place an egg yolk in each depression.
Serve the sauce with the toast in a gravy boat.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Eggs: The yolks form the topping and the chopped whites are stirred into the sauce for body and flavor.
Deviled ham: Adds savory, seasoned flavor to the toast base.
Bread: Provides a crisp, toasted base that holds the topping.
Thin white sauce: Provides a smooth, moist sauce that carries the chopped egg whites.

“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.