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Egg Cream Toast

Egg Cream Toast is toast topped with a custard-like egg cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Cream Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and let it thicken smoothly.

  3. Gradually add the milk, salt, and pepper.

Make the egg mixture and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then carefully fold in the yolks.

  2. Fold the egg mixture into the cream sauce and cook until the egg is firm like custard.

  3. Pour the mixture over the toast and serve hot.

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. Butter + flourtop 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Eggs
Whites beaten stiff give lightness, while the yolks thicken the sauce as it cooks into a custard.
Flour
Starch thickens the melted butter and milk into a smooth, stable cream sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce, giving it body and a mild sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the flour cook smoothly into the sauce.

The step that matters

Fold the egg mixture into the cream sauce and cook until the egg is firm like custard.. Egg proteins set when heated, so the mixture must be cooked gently until thickened. Overheating can curdle the eggs and make the custard grainy, while underheating leaves it runny.

“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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