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Beauregard Eggs

A baked dish of boiled eggs, toast, and a butter‑cornstarch sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Beauregard Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs in water for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the shells, chop the whites finely, and sieve the yolks separately.

Make the white sauce

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Mix the butter and cornstarch together, then add to the boiling milk.

  3. Stir in the chopped egg whites, salt, and pepper.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the toast on a hot dish.

  2. Layer the toast with the white sauce.

  3. Add the yolks.

  4. Add the remaining whites.

  5. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  6. Place in the oven for a couple of minutes.

  7. 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + walnuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide the bulk of the dish, with whites and yolks giving different textures.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce as it heats.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the white sauce.
Toast
Gives a crisp base that holds the sauce and eggs.

The step that matters

Add the cornstarch and butter to the boiling milk. Cornstarch must be mixed with the butter first and added to boiling milk so it disperses evenly; otherwise it clumps, and it needs to reach a simmer to thicken fully.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Walnutthe original
  2. Cocoafits about as well
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Almondfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, butter, pepper. 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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