Name: Scalloped Eggs
Ingredients: 6 hard-cooked eggs; ½ cup buttered cracker crumbs; 1 pint white sauce (No. 1); ½ cup chopped cold meat (ham, chicken, veal, or fish)

Why it works: Sauce and meat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,167 recipes. The science ↓

Scalloped Eggs

Ingredients

6 hard-cooked eggs
½ cup buttered cracker crumbs
1 pint white sauce (No. 1)
½ cup chopped cold meat (ham, chicken, veal, or fish)

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Layer

Chop the hard‑cooked eggs finely.
Sprinkle the bottom of a buttered baking dish with cracker crumbs.
Layer half of the chopped eggs over the crumbs.
Pour half of the white sauce over the eggs.
Add a layer of chopped meat.
Repeat the layers with the remaining eggs, sauce, and meat.
Top with the remaining cracker crumbs.

Bake

Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the crumbs are brown.

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.

Sauce + meattop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,167 recipes
Egg + meattop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,432 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Egg + saucetop 39% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,895 recipes

Egg and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,895 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: Provide the main body and richness of the dish as a set layer.
White sauce: Supplies moisture and binds the eggs and meat together during baking.
Cracker crumbs: Form a crisp, browned top and a buttery base layer.
Cold meat: Adds savoury flavour and substance between the egg layers.

“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.