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Beauregard Eggs

A dish of hard‑boiled eggs mixed with a butter‑cornstarch sauce served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Beauregard Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shell the hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Chop the whites finely.

  3. Sieve the yolks.

Make the sauce

  1. Bring the milk to a boil.

  2. Rub the butter with the cornstarch until smooth.

  3. Stir the butter-cornstarch mixture into the boiling milk.

  4. Add the chopped egg whites to the sauce.

  5. Add salt to taste to the sauce.

  6. Add pepper to taste to the sauce.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the buttered toast on a hot platter.

  2. Spread the sauce over the buttered toast.

  3. Sprinkle grated yolks over the toast.

  4. Add more sauce over the toast.

  5. Finish with the remaining yolks.

  6. Dust with salt.

  7. Dust with pepper.

  8. Place in the oven 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + walnuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. 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
Whites are chopped into the sauce for body, and sieved yolks add richness and a fine texture on top.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it comes to a boil.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when stirred into it while boiling.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the sauce and helps the cornstarch blend in smoothly.

The step that matters

Stir the butter-cornstarch mixture into the boiling milk. Cornstarch only thickens fully when heated, and it clumps if added without being smoothed into fat first. Adding it to boiling liquid while stirring disperses the starch so the sauce thickens evenly.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, butter, pepper):

  1. Walnutthe original
  2. Cocoafits about as well
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Almondfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, butter, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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