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Escalloped Eggs

A baked dish of beaten egg whites with a yolk mixture seasoned with pepper and salt, topped with cracker dust and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Escalloped Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs separately.

  2. Place the beaten egg whites in a baking dish and make a hollow in the center.

Assemble and bake

  1. Beat the yolks and mix in the pepper and salt.

  2. Sprinkle a little cracker dust over the yolk mixture and add the butter.

  3. Pour the yolk mixture into the hollow of the egg whites.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for five minutes and serve very 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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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
Whites set to form the base while yolks stay soft and creamy in the center.
Butter
Adds richness and a little fat to the yolk mixture for smoother texture.
Cracker dust
Coats the yolk mixture and helps it brown lightly and hold its shape while baking.

The step that matters

Baking time and serving. Five minutes is short, so the yolks can stay runny or the whites can stay underset if the oven is not hot enough. Serve right away, since the eggs firm and cool quickly.

“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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