Skip to main content
Main

Nuns' Toast

A toasted bread dish topped with sliced hard-boiled eggs and a butter-onion sauce seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Cut the hard-boiled eggs into slices.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat until it bubbles.

  2. Add the chopped onion and cook until soft but not colored.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  4. Gradually add the milk, stirring until smooth.

  5. Add the egg slices and heat through.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the toasted bread and season with pepper and salt.

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 filling, adding body and a mild, rich texture to the sauce.
Butter
Supplies fat for cooking the onion and forms the base of the sauce.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and mild sweetness as it softens in the butter.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, giving it creaminess and moisture.
Bread
Acts as the base that soaks up the sauce and gives a crisp, toasted contrast.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk, stirring until smooth. Flour clumps if liquid is added all at once. Adding milk slowly while stirring lets the starch disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens smooth rather than lumpy.

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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes