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Baked or Shirred Eggs

A simple baked egg dish seasoned with salt and topped with butter and bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Baked or Shirred Eggs

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Prick several holes in the large end of each egg with a large pin.

  3. Break each egg into a cup, being careful not to break the yolk.

  4. Place the eggs in a hot, buttered dish suitable for serving.

Bake and serve

  1. Sprinkle a little coarse sea salt on each egg.

  2. Bake for 10 minutes, until the white is firm.

  3. Add a little butter on top and serve immediately.

  4. Garnish each egg with thin strips of breakfast bacon.

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. Egg + buttertop 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

Eggs
Set into a firm white and form the main body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps keep the dish from sticking.

The step that matters

Breaking each egg into a cup. Keeping the yolk intact matters because a broken yolk spreads into the white as it bakes, changing the look and texture of the dish.

“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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