Name: Eggs and Bacon with Cream Sauce
Ingredients: 6 slices of bacon; 1 tablespoon butter; 1 cup milk; ½ teaspoon flour; 6 hard-boiled eggs; Dash of cayenne

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Eggs and Bacon with Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the sauce

In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.
Whisk in the flour and cook for 1 minute.
Gradually add the milk, stirring until the sauce thickens.

Prepare and serve

Cook the bacon in a skillet until crisp.
Cut the hard-boiled eggs in half.
Pour the sauce over the eggs just before serving.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter: Enriches the sauce and gives it a rich flavor as the base for the roux.
Flour: Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and then combined with milk.
Milk: Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce, which thickens as it heats.
Hard-boiled eggs: Provide the main body of the dish, sliced and topped with the sauce.
Bacon: Adds salty, savory flavor and crisp texture to the dish.

The step that matters

Adding the milk gradually. Adding milk slowly to the butter and flour roux, while stirring, keeps the starch evenly dispersed so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

“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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Eggs and Bacon with Cream Sauce