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Beauregard Eggs

A sauce of butter, flour, corn starch, and milk is mixed with chopped egg whites and yolks, then spread on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Make the sauce

  1. Chop the whites of the hard-boiled eggs finely.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat, then stir in the flour and corn starch.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly until the sauce thickens.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the chopped egg whites while the sauce is still hot.

Serve

  1. Spread the mixture on toast and top with the yolks pressed through a sieve.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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
Chopped whites add body and protein-based texture to the creamy sauce, while pressed yolks give a crumbly topping.
Butter
Fat that melts with the flour to form the base of the sauce and adds richness.
Flour
Starch that thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Liquid that, heated with the roux, swells the starch and forms the sauce's body.
Corn starch
Extra starch that helps the sauce thicken more firmly and stay glossy.

The step that matters

Add the milk gradually while stirring constantly. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the starch dispersed so it hydrates evenly. Dumping the milk in at once can form lumps that stay in the 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.

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