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Meringued Eggs

Meringued Eggs is a baked dish of stiffened egg whites with yolks, seasoned with pepper and salt, topped with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Meringued Eggs

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the meringue

  1. Whip the egg whites until very stiff.

  2. Spoon large dollops of the whipped egg whites onto a heatproof platter.

  3. Make a hollow in the center of each dollop and place an egg yolk in it.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the meringue begins to color faintly.

  2. Sprinkle with pepper and salt, add a small piece of butter on each egg, and serve on the platter.

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. Pepper + buttertop 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

Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that holds the dollops in shape and sets when baked.
Egg yolks
Sit in the hollows and stay soft and rich, providing fat and a creamy center.
Butter
Melts over the hot eggs, adding moisture and richness to the yolks and meringue.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites until very stiff. Egg white foam holds its shape only when whipped enough for proteins to unfold and trap air. Underwhipped whites spread and collapse in the oven, so the dollops lose their hollow shape.

“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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