Skip to main content
Main

Buttered Eggs

A dish of eggs cooked with melted butter, served on toasted bread or with salt fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Buttered Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the buttered eggs

  1. Beat the eggs together in a bowl.

  2. Melt the butter in a basin over boiling water.

  3. Combine the melted butter and eggs in a saucepan.

  4. Hold the saucepan over low heat, shaking it as it warms.

  5. Pour the mixture into a basin and back into the saucepan, stirring constantly.

  6. Continue until the mixture is hot but not boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve on toasted bread or in a basin with salt fish or red herrings.

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. Bread + fishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. 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 thick, creamy custard-like texture as they gently heat.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel that carries the flavour.

The step that matters

Keep the mixture below boiling while stirring. Egg proteins set and curl when they get too hot, which turns the sauce grainy or scrambled. Gentle heat and constant stirring keep it smooth and thick.

“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.

More buttered eggs recipes

Indian 3 See all 55 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes