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Hard-Boiled Eggs on Toast

Hard-boiled eggs are served on toasted bread with a beef or bacon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hard-Boiled Eggs on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the pressed beef, bacon, or ham.

  2. Chop the hard-boiled eggs into small pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Make the white or brown sauce and flavor it with tomato purée and spiced pepper.

  2. Add the chopped eggs to the sauce and heat thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Fry the bread slices until golden brown.

  2. Pour the sauce over the fried bread and dust with grated beef before serving.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Coffee + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan (thiamin, meat).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the main filling, bulking the sauce with set egg texture and protein.
White or brown sauce
Forms the creamy base that binds the chopped eggs and coats the bread.
Tomato purée
Adds concentrated tomato flavor and a little acidity and color to the sauce.
Pressed beef, bacon, or ham
Adds savory, salty meaty flavor to the filling and garnish.

The step that matters

Add the chopped eggs to the sauce and heat thoroughly. The eggs and sauce must be heated through so the filling is hot and safe, but prolonged boiling can make the sauce separate or the egg whites toughen and turn rubbery.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, coffee, sauce, pepper, bread, beef):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, coffee, sauce, pepper, bread, beef. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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