Skip to main content
Main

Creamed Eggs with Cheese

Hard‑boiled eggs topped with a warm cheese sauce served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cheese and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,861 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Creamed Eggs with Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Hard-boil the eggs. Let the eggs cool, then slice the eggs.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the white sauce until boiling.

  2. Stir in the grated cheese and season with cayenne pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on rounds of 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. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + cheesetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Egg + cheesetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

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

  5. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Sauce and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 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
Provide the main body and protein of the dish, sliced to hold their shape in the sauce.
White sauce
Gives a smooth, creamy moisture that coats the eggs and carries the flavor.
Grated cheese
Adds savory richness and flavor, melting into the sauce to thicken its texture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cheese. If the cheese goes into very hot sauce, the proteins can tighten and the fat can separate, leaving the sauce grainy or oily. Lowering the heat before stirring keeps it smooth.

“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