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Eggs Poached in Cream Sauce with Cheese

A dish of eggs poached in a butter‑flour cream sauce, seasoned with salt and pepper, topped with grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Eggs Poached in Cream Sauce with Cheese

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Mix in the flour and pour in the hot milk or cream.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

Bake and serve

  1. Drop the eggs into the mixture in a shallow dish.

  2. Sprinkle a little grated cheese over each egg.

  3. Set the dish in the oven and cook very slowly until the eggs are set.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and flavor to the base.
Flour
Thickens the milk or cream into a smooth, coating sauce.
Hot milk or cream
Forms the liquid sauce that gently cooks and surrounds the eggs.
Eggs
Set in the warm sauce to form soft, tender cooked egg portions.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and may brown lightly on top in the oven.

The step that matters

Cook very slowly until the eggs are set. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures, and high heat makes them toughen, curdle, or turn rubbery. A gentle oven keeps the whites tender while the yolks firm to the desired degree.

“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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