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 ↓
Serving 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.
Prepare the toast
Toast the round slices of bread delicately.
Butter the toasted bread and dip lightly in hot water.
Add the egg white and yolk
Beat the egg white stiff with a speck of salt and spread it on each round.
Make a depression in the center of each and place a whole yolk in it.
Bake and serve
Set the toast in the oven at 400°F (200°C) just long enough to set the yolk and brown the white slightly.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Egg white
- Whipped stiff, it forms a foam that holds its shape and browns lightly in the oven.
- Whole egg yolks
- Set in the oven to form a soft, creamy center that thickens with heat.
- Butter
- Adds richness and helps the toast brown and taste savoury.
- Round slices of bread
- Provide the sturdy base that holds the whites and yolks above the pan.
The step that matters
Baking the toast. Heat sets the yolk gradually, so leaving the toast in too long can turn the yolk firm and dry. Remove it once the yolk just sets and the white is lightly browned.
“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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