Skip to main content
Main

Eggs on Toast

Eggs on Toast is a simple dish of poached eggs served on buttered toast, moistened with salted water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Eggs on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Toast the slices of bread.

  2. Butter the toast.

Poach and assemble

  1. Poach the required number of eggs.

  2. Place the poached eggs on top of the toast.

  3. Moisten the toast with the salted water used for poaching the eggs.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. 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
Provide the main topping, with their proteins setting when poached in water.
Bread
Forms the crisp base that holds the eggs and absorbs the moisture from the water.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the toast, improving flavor and browning.

The step that matters

Poach the eggs. Eggs cook gently in water kept just below a simmer, so the whites set around the yolk. A rolling boil can tear the whites and leave the eggs ragged.

“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.

More eggs on toast recipes

Poached 48Scrambled 16Baked 12Butter 3Deviled 3with Sauce 3 See all 62 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes