Skip to main content
Breakfast

Creamed Cheese and Eggs

A cheese sauce with eggs served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,426 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Creamed Cheese and Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Make a thin white sauce by combining flour, milk, salt, and a few grains of cayenne pepper in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir until the sauce thickens, then add the grated cheese and stir until melted.

  3. Chop the egg whites and add them to the cheese sauce.

Serve on toast

  1. Pour the sauce over the toast.

  2. Pour the egg yolks through a strainer and sprinkle them over the 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. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + cheesetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce that clings to the toast.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a creamy body once thickened.
Grated cheese
Melts into the sauce, adding rich flavour and a smooth, stretchy texture.
Hard boiled eggs
Add soft, mild richness and body to the sauce, with the yolks left as a crumbly topping.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce until it thickens. Flour must be stirred continuously over heat so it hydrates evenly; otherwise lumps form and the sauce stays thin or grainy when the cheese is added.

“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

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes