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Beauregard Eggs

A dish of boiled eggs served on toast with a butter‑flour‑milk sauce and topped with chopped yolks and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beauregard Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs hard.

  2. Remove the shells.

  3. Chop the egg whites finely.

  4. Pass the yolks through a potato ricer or chop them very fine.

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare the toast on a hot plate.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the butter and flour.

  3. Add the milk and bring to a boil.

  4. Stir in the chopped egg whites, salt, pepper, and parsley.

  5. Let it boil once.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cover the toast with a layer of the sauce.

  2. Sprinkle the chopped yolks on top.

  3. Serve.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
The whites are folded into the sauce and the yolks make a crumbly topping.
Flour
Combined with butter to form a roux that thickens the milk into a sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it comes to a boil.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavor and forms the base of the roux.
Toast
Provides a crisp base that holds the sauce and egg topping.

The step that matters

Let it boil once. Flour thickens milk only when the mixture reaches a boil and the starch granules swell. Stopping short leaves the sauce thin and floury-tasting, while boiling too long can scorch the milk on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

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