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Baked Eggs and Bacon

A simple baked egg dish topped with bacon and bread crumbs, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Baked Eggs and Bacon

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Butter a baking dish.

Assemble

  1. Break the desired number of eggs into the dish.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  4. Cut bacon into small squares and sprinkle over the crumbs.

  5. Add more bread crumbs and more bacon on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 10 minutes or until the eggs are set.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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
Set into a firm, tender custard as they bake, forming the body of the dish.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add a light, toasted texture on top.
Bacon
Renders fat into the dish and browns, adding savory flavor and crispness.

The step that matters

Bake for 10 minutes or until the eggs are set. Eggs keep cooking from residual heat after leaving the oven. Pulling them when the whites are just set and yolks still soft keeps the texture tender rather than dry and rubbery.

“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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