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Escaloped Eggs

A baked egg dish with a ham and breadcrumb mixture.

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 ↓

Escaloped Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the ham mixture

  1. Make a force meat by mixing chopped ham, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, and melted butter.

  2. Moisten with milk to form a soft paste.

Assemble and bake

  1. Half fill patty tins with the mixture.

  2. Carefully break an egg on top of each.

  3. Dust with additional pepper and salt, then sift cracker crumbs over all.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the eggs are set, about 8 minutes.

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

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

  3. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set when baked, forming the firm, cooked top of each portion.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and butter, giving the ham mixture a soft, binding paste.
Chopped ham
Provides the savory, meaty flavor of the filling.
Milk
Moistens the crumbs so the mixture holds together as a soft paste.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and helps bind the mixture while adding flavor.

The step that matters

Carefully break an egg on top of each. Keeping the yolks whole and placing them on the mixture without breaking the yolk helps each egg set neatly on the surface. Eggs cook quickly, so the whites and yolks should be set just until firm.

“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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