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Eggs, Buttered

A baked dish of sliced hard‑boiled eggs topped with raw eggs, curry powder, breadcrumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Eggs, Buttered

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

  1. Cut the hard-boiled eggs into thick slices.

  2. Place the slices in a well-buttered baking dish.

  3. Sprinkle the curry powder and a few grains of cayenne over the eggs.

  4. Beat the raw eggs slightly and season with salt and pepper.

  5. Pour the seasoned eggs into the dish over the hard-boiled eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the surface lightly with browned breadcrumbs and dot with bits of butter.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 10 minutes.

  3. 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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + peppertop 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

Raw eggs
Beaten and poured over the eggs, they set into a binding custard that holds the dish together.
Hard-boiled eggs
Form the main body of the dish, sliced and layered in the baking dish.
Butter
Greases the dish and dots the top, adding richness and helping the surface brown.
Browned breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping that adds texture over the soft eggs.

The step that matters

Pour the seasoned eggs over the hard-boiled eggs. Raw egg proteins set when heated, so the beaten egg must be evenly seasoned and poured evenly to form a cohesive, moist custard rather than a dry or lumpy layer.

“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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