Skip to main content
Main

Scalloped Eggs

Scalloped eggs are baked hard‑boiled eggs coated in a butter, flour, and milk sauce and topped with breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Scalloped Eggs

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.

Prepare the eggs

  1. Remove the shells from the hard-boiled eggs and pass them through a sieve.

  2. Mix the eggs with salt and pepper.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter, add the flour, and stir in the milk until smooth.

  2. Pour the milk mixture over the seasoned eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Sprinkle bread crumbs on top.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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, giving it substance and a soft, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the flour cook into a smooth base for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that holds the eggs together.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and a mild, creamy flavor.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir the milk and flour until smooth. Flour clumps if it is not blended into melted butter and milk gradually; lumps stay in the sauce and it will not thicken evenly. Stirring keeps the starch dispersed so it thickens into a smooth sauce.

“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