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Egg on Toast

A slice of raised bread topped with a cooked egg, buttered and lightly steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Toast the slice of raised bread until evenly golden.

  2. Butter the toasted bread.

  3. Pour a little hot water onto the bread, just enough to absorb.

Finish and serve

  1. Prepare a dropped egg, cooked to your preference.

  2. Cover the bread with the egg and let it steam 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Raised bread
Forms the sturdy toasted base that holds the egg and absorbs the butter and water.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the toasted bread, carrying flavour across its surface.
Egg
Provides the soft, set topping whose yolk and white coat the bread.

The step that matters

Pour the hot water sparingly. Hot water softens the toast, so only enough to be absorbed should be used. Too much leaves the bread soggy and stops it holding the egg.

“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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