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Shirred Eggs

A simple dish of eggs cooked in butter on a saucer.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Shirred Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place a heavy saucer on the stove.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of butter and heat until melted.

  3. Break 2 eggs into the saucer and cook until they bubble and begin to set.

  4. Serve the eggs in the saucer on a small plate immediately.

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).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a tender structure as they cook, forming the body of the dish.
Butter
Melts to grease the saucer and add richness and flavor to the eggs.

The step that matters

Cook until the eggs bubble and begin to set. Eggs turn firm and dry when overcooked, so stopping as the whites just begin to set keeps them tender. Heat from the hot saucer continues to cook them after they leave the stove, so serving promptly matters.

“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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