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Buttered Eggs Au Jus

Eggs cooked in butter and cream, served on toast with a reduced Clear Brown Sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Buttered Eggs Au Jus

Ingredients

Directions

Make the egg mixture

  1. Melt the butter in an enamelled saucepan.

  2. Add the cream and remove from heat.

  3. Break the eggs into the saucepan and season with pepper and salt.

  4. Return the saucepan to the heat and stir with a wooden spoon until the mixture thickens like custard, being careful not to curdle.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fry the toast squares in butter.

  2. Place a tablespoon of the egg mixture on each toast square.

  3. Serve with three or four tablespoons of slightly reduced Clear Brown Sauce.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a custard-like mixture that thickens the dish and forms its body.
Butter
Enriches the mixture with fat and adds flavour to the eggs and toast.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness, helping the eggs stay smooth and tender.
Clear brown sauce
Adds savoury depth and moisture as the sauce served alongside.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs over heat. Egg proteins set as they warm, so heat that is too high or stirring that is too slow can scramble or curdle the mixture. Keep the heat gentle and stir constantly to get a smooth, custard-like texture.

“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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