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Egg Gems

Egg Gems are small baked meat and breadcrumb cakes topped with an egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Egg Gems

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.

Prepare the filling

  1. Mix cold meat and bread crumbs in equal quantities.

  2. Add pepper, coarse sea salt, butter, and milk to the mixture.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill buttered gem pans with the mixture.

  2. Carefully break an egg on top of each filled pan.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then sprinkle fine cracker crumbs on top.

  4. Optionally, add grated cheese to the cracker crumbs before baking.

  5. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for eight 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. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  5. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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 a firm, tender topping over the filling.
Bread crumbs
Bind with the milk and butter to give the filling body and structure.
Cold meat
Supplies the savory bulk and flavor of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the filling brown lightly in the oven.
Milk
Moistens the crumbs so the filling stays soft rather than dry.

The step that matters

Breaking the egg on top of each pan. Break the egg gently so the yolk stays whole and sits on the filling. A broken yolk spreads and cooks unevenly, so the egg sets less neatly in the pan.

“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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