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Scalloped Eggs

A baked dish of eggs, ham, breadcrumbs, butter, and milk, seasoned with pepper and salt.

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

Scalloped Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the base

  1. Make a minced mixture of chopped ham, fine bread crumbs, pepper, coarse sea salt, and melted butter.

  2. Moisten the mixture with milk to form a soft paste.

Assemble and bake

  1. Half fill pattypans with the mixture.

  2. Carefully break an egg on top of each patty.

  3. Dust with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for eight minutes.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set when baked, forming a firm, cohesive topping over the crumb base.
Fine bread crumbs
Provide the body of the paste and absorb milk and butter to hold the mixture together.
Milk
Moistens the crumbs into a soft paste so the base stays tender while baking.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the mixture bind and brown lightly.
Chopped ham
Contributes savory flavor and salt to the base.

The step that matters

Carefully break an egg on top of each patty. Keeping the yolk intact depends on gentle handling, since the egg must sit on the base without breaking. The egg white sets around the yolk in the oven, so a broken yolk spreads and changes the look of the finished dish.

“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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