Skip to main content
Main

Egg Salad

A baked dish of sliced hard‑boiled eggs layered with a cream‑butter‑parsley sauce and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Egg Salad

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine cream, butter, parsley, and flour in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat until thick.

Assemble and bake

  1. Slice the hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Layer sliced eggs and bread crumbs in a baking dish, pouring the cream mixture over each layer until the dish is filled.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until brown.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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
Form the main body of the dish, setting firm in the baked layers.
Cream
Makes a rich sauce that moistens the layers and thickens when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the sauce feel smooth.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture into a stable, spoonable sauce.
Bread crumbs
Add texture and help the top brown during baking.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce until thick. Flour only thickens when the cream mixture is heated enough to gelatinise its starch. If the sauce is left too thin, it will run through the layers and make the dish watery after baking.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, butter, flour, bread):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, butter, flour, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes