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Egg Savoury

A savory egg and bacon mixture formed into balls and cooked in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Egg Savoury

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Chop the hard-boiled eggs and mix with diced bacon, pepper, salt, and sweet herbs.

Make the binding sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter, add flour, and stir together.

  2. Slowly add the milk and stir until it boils.

  3. Add the egg and bacon mixture, stirring until thick.

Shape and cook

  1. Turn out onto a plate and let cool.

  2. Form into balls.

  3. Place the balls in a well-buttered bag and cook for 10 minutes.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 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

Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the bulk of the filling and set firmly when cooked.
Fat bacon
Adds rich, savoury fat and flavour to the filling.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds flavour to the flour base.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that binds the filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, moistening the mixture.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce until it boils. Flour needs to be cooked as the milk comes to a boil; otherwise the sauce stays starchy and thickens unevenly. Stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the pan bottom.

“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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