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Beauregard Eggs

A dish of boiled eggs served on buttered toast with a flour‑butter‑milk sauce and egg yolk topping.

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

Beauregard Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Cook and prepare the eggs

  1. Place the eggs in warm water.

  2. Bring the eggs to a boil.

  3. Keep the eggs just below boiling for 30 minutes.

  4. Transfer the eggs to cold water.

  5. Let the eggs cool.

  6. Remove the shells.

  7. Separate the yolks and whites.

  8. Chop the whites very fine.

  9. Press the yolks through a sieve.

Make the sauce and assemble

  1. Toast the bread slices.

  2. Butter the toast while hot.

  3. Rub together the flour and butter in a pan.

  4. Add the milk to the pan and stir until boiling.

  5. Add the salt, black pepper, and chopped egg whites to the mixture.

  6. Pour the mixture over the toast.

  7. Sprinkle the toast with yolks.

  8. Dust lightly with salt and pepper.

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. Bread + buttertop 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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 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).

Flour and butter 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
Provide the whites, which are chopped into the sauce, and the yolks, which are sieved over the toast.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, pourable white sauce.
Butter
Combines with flour to form a roux and adds richness to the sauce and toast.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it comes to a boil.
Bread
Serves as the base that the sauce is poured over.

The step that matters

Keep the eggs just below boiling for 30 minutes. At a full boil the egg whites become tough and rubbery, and the yolks can turn chalky and grey at the edges. Holding the eggs just below boiling keeps both textures tender and smooth, which matters because the whites are chopped fine and the yolks are pressed through a sieve.

“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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