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Shirked Eggs

Eggs baked with butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Shirked Eggs

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Butter a sauce plate.

  2. Separate the eggs, keeping the yolks intact.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

Bake and serve

  1. Pile the beaten whites irregularly on the sauce plate.

  2. Make two nests in the whites and slip in the yolks.

  3. Bake in a cool oven (300°F / 150°C) until the whites are lightly browned.

  4. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and a bit of butter before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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 to stiff foam set into a light structure, while the yolks stay rich and runny inside.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the finished eggs and helps prevent sticking on the plate.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Whites must be beaten enough to hold their shape. Under-beaten whites collapse and spread, while over-beaten whites turn dry and grainy. Stiff whites give the dish its structure.

“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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