Skip to main content
Main

Egg and Bacon Pie

A savory pie made with a soft dough crust, bacon or ham, and an egg-milk filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 and Bacon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the crust

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt.

  3. Rub in butter until the mixture resembles meal.

  4. Add milk gradually to form a soft dough.

  5. Roll the dough to about ½ inch thickness and line a baking dish.

Fill and bake

  1. Remove rind and outer edge from bacon or ham, roll it up, and cover the bottom of the crust.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix with milk, salt, and pepper.

  3. Pour the egg mixture over the bacon or ham in the crust.

  4. Bake until set and golden.

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. Flour + buttertop 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 + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the soft dough that holds the pie base.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the crust rise and turn light.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour, it makes the crust tender and flaky.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the custard filling into a firm, sliceable texture.
Milk
Hydrates the dough and forms the liquid custard that the eggs set in.
Bacon or ham
Provides savory flavor and fat that seasons the custard as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until set and golden. Eggs thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Pulling the pie too early leaves a runny custard, while overbaking can make it 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.

More egg and bacon pie recipes

Cold 4 See all 3 →

You might also like

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