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Cheese and Egg Toast

A toasted bread topped with a creamy egg and cheese mixture, seasoned with pepper, salt, and anchovy paste, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Cheese and Egg Toast

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the egg mixture

  1. Hard boil the eggs.

  2. Pound the eggs in a mortar with enough cream to make a paste.

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

  4. Mix in the grated cheese.

Assemble and bake

  1. Toast the round of bread.

  2. Cut off the crust.

  3. Butter the bread.

  4. Cut the buttered bread into six pieces.

  5. Spread each piece thinly with anchovy paste.

  6. Pile the egg mixture on top of each piece.

  7. Sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  8. Add a tiny bit of butter on each piece.

  9. Place the pieces in a 400°F (200°C) oven to heat.

  10. 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. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide the main body of the spread, setting firmly when cooked and binding the paste.
Cream
Moistens the pounded egg so it forms a spreadable paste.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury richness and flavour to the egg mixture.
Bread
Forms the crisp toasted base that holds the topping.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the toast brown lightly in the oven.

“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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