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Baked Eggs, Gratin Sttle

Baked eggs topped with a white sauce, Parmesan, and fried breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked Eggs, Gratin Sttle

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs until hard, then remove the shells and slice them.

  2. Arrange the slices closely in a dish.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the white sauce, butter, Parmesan cheese, lemon juice, and egg yolks.

  2. Season the sauce with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Stir the sauce over low heat until it thickens.

  4. Remove the sauce from heat.

  5. Add the shredded eggs to the sauce.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the dish with the sauce mixture.

  2. Smooth the top of the dish.

  3. Sprinkle fried bread crumbs and additional Parmesan cheese over the top.

  4. Place the dish in a very hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for a few minutes to gratinate.

  5. Serve.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 firm, sliced base and body of the gratin.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and help it thicken and set smoothly when heated.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory, salty flavor and browns on the surface when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
White sauce
Forms the creamy base that binds the eggs together.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce over low heat until it thickens. Egg yolks can scramble if the sauce gets too hot. Gentle, low heat lets the yolks thicken the sauce smoothly without curdling.

“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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