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Baked Eggs

Eggs baked with butter, salt, pepper, and optional cracker crumbs and chopped meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,475 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Baked Eggs

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Bake

  1. Drop one egg at a time onto a buttered plate, being careful not to break the yolk, until the plate is full.

  2. Sprinkle a little coarse sea salt and black pepper on each egg and add a bit of butter.

  3. Bake in the oven until the whites are set.

Variation

  1. For a variation, cover the plate with a mixture of moistened cracker-crumbs and chopped meat before adding the eggs.

  2. Make hollows in the mixture and drop an egg in each, season, and bake as before.

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. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

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

  2. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Pepper + hamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the whites and form the main body of the dish as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour and helps keep the eggs from sticking to the plate.
Moistened cracker-crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the variation a soft, bready base under the eggs.
Chopped ham or veal or chicken or mutton
Adds savoury flavour and substance to the variation's meat layer.

The step that matters

Dropping the eggs onto the plate. Eggs spread on a flat plate, so a broken yolk can run into the whites. Keeping each yolk intact, and spacing the eggs so they do not run together, helps each one cook evenly and look neat when set.

“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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