Skip to main content
Main

Shirred Eggs

Eggs cooked in butter in ramekins, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Shirred Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter small ramekins or nappies and break one egg into each.

  2. Arrange the ramekins in a perforated pan or broad wire basket.

Cook and serve

  1. Set the pan in boiling water on the stove.

  2. Cook until the egg whites are set.

  3. Remove the ramekins, add a bit of butter, and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  4. Serve immediately and eat from the ramekins.

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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  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 with gentle heat to form the tender, sliceable body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and keeps the eggs from sticking to the ramekins.

The step that matters

Cook until the egg whites are set. Gentle steam from the boiling water sets the whites while the yolks stay soft. Cooking too long fully sets the yolks and dries the dish, so check the whites closely and remove the ramekins as soon as they are firm.

“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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes