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Nuns' Toast

A savory toast topped with a creamy egg and onion sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Nuns' Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Slice the hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan until bubbling.

  3. Add the chopped onion and cook without browning.

  4. Stir in the flour and cook briefly.

  5. Pour in the milk and stir until smooth.

  6. Add the egg slices and heat through.

  7. Season with pepper and salt.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce over hot buttered toast.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the main body of the dish, sliced and warmed through in the sauce.
Butter
Carries the onion and flour and adds richness to the sauce.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and flavor to the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, which thickens when combined with the flour.

The step that matters

Cook the onion without browning. Browning would add bitter, toasted flavors that clash with the delicate white sauce. Gentle cooking softens the onion and keeps the sauce pale and mild.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, flour, milk, pepper, bread. 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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