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Boiled Eggs with Cream Sauce

A baked dish of boiled eggs topped with a creamy sauce and breadcrumb crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Eggs with Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs hard.

  2. Place the boiled eggs in cold water.

  3. Peel the shells.

  4. Chop the whites finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk to boiling.

  2. Stir in the butter and corn starch.

  3. Stir until the mixture begins to thicken.

  4. Add the minced egg whites.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

Layer and bake

  1. Drop bits of butter on top.

  2. Cover with powdered yolks.

  3. Add a layer of the whites and drawn butter.

  4. Top with a final crust of salted, peppered, and buttered breadcrumbs.

  5. Bake covered at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes until slightly browned.

  6. Serve in a pie dish.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  4. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  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
Whites are chopped and set in the sauce, giving the dish its body and protein structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the thickened sauce is built on, adding moisture and richness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel, and helps the top brown in the oven.
Corn starch
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth, creamy sauce as its granules swell with heat.
Powdered egg yolks
Adds concentrated egg flavour and richness to the layers without extra liquid.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust on top that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture begins to thicken. Cornstarch needs to reach a boil or near-boil with constant stirring to swell and thicken evenly. Stopping early leaves a thin sauce, while stirring too little can cause lumps.

“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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