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Cheese Eggs

A mixture of eggs, cheese, and milk served on buttered toast, seasoned with salt, pepper, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cheese Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese egg mixture

  1. In a pan, combine cheese and milk, stirring until dissolved.

  2. Add salt, pepper, cayenne, and beaten eggs, stirring until the mixture thickens.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on thinly buttered toast and garnish with parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the milk and cheese mixture as they set when heated, giving it a creamy body.
Cheese
Provides rich flavour and, melted into the milk, gives the sauce its body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that dissolves the cheese and carries the eggs.

The step that matters

Stirring in the eggs. Eggs set when heated and can curdle or scramble if the heat is too high or they are not stirred constantly. Keep the heat moderate and stir steadily so the mixture thickens smoothly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cheese, milk, pepper, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cheese, milk, pepper, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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