Skip to main content
Main

Consomme on Plates

Consommé served on bread with poached eggs, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Consomme on Plates

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a gentle oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Strain the consommé and keep it hot by the fire.

  2. Cut stale brown bread into 1‑inch slices and shape them into 2‑inch by 1‑inch pieces, keeping the crust on.

Assemble

  1. Arrange 7 or 8 pieces of bread on each plate in a circle, leaning on their edges and overlapping slightly.

  2. Butter the centers of the plates, break an egg into each, and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Pour a little consommé into the bottom of each plate.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the plates in a 300°F (150°C) oven to lightly poach the eggs.

  2. Remove from the oven, pour more consommé over the bread, and serve the plates with a tureen of consommé separately.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set when gently heated, forming the soft poached centre of each plate.
Stale brown bread
Absorbs consommé and holds its shape, giving the dish body and structure.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth fat layer that keeps the egg from sticking to the plate.
Consommé
Provides the clear, savoury broth that moistens the bread and surrounds the eggs.

The step that matters

Gently poaching the eggs in the oven. Egg whites begin to set around 60°C, and the yolk thickens at higher heat. Low, gentle oven heat with hot consommé lets the white set while the yolk stays soft, so the eggs do not turn rubbery.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes