Skip to main content
Main

Escaloped Eggs

A baked dish of hard‑boiled eggs layered with bread crumbs, butter gravy, and minced meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Escaloped Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a buttered baking dish, layer bread crumbs moistened with milk or meat broth.

  3. Prepare a thick drawn butter gravy and mix in a beaten egg.

Assemble and bake

  1. Dip each slice of hard boiled egg in the gravy and layer them on the bread crumbs.

  2. Sprinkle with minced meat, then add another layer of bread crumbs, eggs, and meat until all ingredients are used.

  3. Top with sifted bread crumbs and heat through.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the soft base and layers that absorb the moisture of the gravy and milk.
Hard boiled eggs
Provide the main body and firm, sliced texture of the dish.
Drawn butter gravy
Adds moisture and richness that binds the layers together as the dish heats.
Beaten egg
Enriches the gravy and helps it set lightly when heated.
Minced meat
Adds savory flavor and substance between the egg and crumb layers.

The step that matters

Layering the eggs in the gravy. Each egg slice should be coated in gravy so the layers stay moist and not dry out in the oven. Evenly spaced layers also let heat reach the centre of the dish.

“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 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipes