Skip to main content
Main

Egg Toast

A toasted bread topped with a boiled egg, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Egg Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Toast the bread over coals until browned.

  2. Dip the toasted bread in hot water with salt.

  3. Butter the bread.

Cook and assemble

  1. Break the egg into boiling water.

  2. Cook until the white is hardened.

  3. Place the cooked egg on top of the buttered toast.

  4. Season the egg with a bit of butter and a pinch of 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg white sets into a firm, tender layer that forms the topping.
Bread
Toasting browns the surface and gives a sturdy base for the egg.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the toast and seasons the egg.

The step that matters

Cook until the white is hardened. Egg white begins to set around 60°C and firms as it heats. Pulling the egg too early leaves the white runny, while overcooking makes it rubbery and tough.

“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.

More egg toast recipes

Anchovy 5Broccoli 3Cheese 3Creamed 3Tomato 3 See all 54 →

You might also like

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