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Eggs with Cream Sauce

A dish of boiled eggs served on toasted bread topped with a creamy sauce and browned breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Eggs with Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Toast the bread.

  2. Dip the toasted bread in boiling water.

  3. Place the bread on a warm platter and cut it in half.

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs for 5 to 7 minutes, then shell and cut them in half.

  2. Lay half an egg on each piece of bread.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk and butter until boiling.

  2. Mix the flour with a little cold water until smooth, then add it to the boiling milk and butter.

  3. Season the sauce with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Pour the sauce over the eggs and sprinkle with browned bread crumbs.

  5. 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Form the main filling and provide rich, savory body under the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the milk and gives the browned bread crumbs flavor.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when heated.
Bread
Serves as the base that holds the eggs and sauce.

The step that matters

Mix the flour with cold water until smooth. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because starch granules swell unevenly. Mixing it into cold water first disperses the starch so the boiling milk thickens into a smooth sauce.

“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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