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Eggs with Cream Dressing

A toast topped with a creamy dressing made from butter, flour, milk, eggs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 with Cream Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Separate the egg whites from the yolks.

  6. Chop the egg whites finely.

  7. Add the chopped whites to the dressing.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange slices of toast on a hot platter.

  2. Pour the dressing over the toast.

  3. Force the yolks through a ricer onto the toast and dressing.

  4. Serve hot.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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
Fat that enriches the dressing and carries flavor as it melts.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, stable cream dressing when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the dressing, which thickens as it heats.
Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the chopped whites for the dressing and the yolks for the topping.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens. Adding milk all at once to the hot butter and flour can leave lumps. Gradual addition with constant stirring lets the starch in the flour hydrate and swell evenly, giving a smooth, thickened sauce.

“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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