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Egg Savoury

A baked dish of layered eggs, spinach, bread, butter, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 603 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Egg Savoury

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter a pie dish and line it with slices of bread and butter.

Layer and bake

  1. Spread a layer of spinach and a layer of sliced eggs.

  2. Dust with nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  3. Repeat the layers and finish with a layer of well-buttered bread.

  4. Pour the milk over the entire dish.

  5. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, or until browned.

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. Spinach + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a custard with the milk, giving the bake its firm, sliceable structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the eggs, keeping the bake moist and custard-like.
Spinach
Adds moisture and a soft, earthy vegetable body between the layers.
Bread
Soaks up the milk and holds the layers together while the dish bakes.

The step that matters

Pour the milk over the entire dish. The milk must soak down through every layer so the eggs set evenly into a custard; uneven soaking leaves dry or runny pockets.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread, butter, nutmeg, pepper, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, butter, nutmeg, pepper, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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