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Buttered Eggs with Tomatoes

Hard-boiled eggs served on toast with a buttered sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Buttered Eggs with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Make a thin white sauce by melting butter, adding flour, and gradually whisking in milk and seasonings.

  2. Separate the yolks from the whites of the hard boiled eggs.

  3. Chop the whites finely and add them to the sauce.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut the toast slices in halves lengthwise and arrange them on a platter.

  2. Pour the sauce over the toast.

  3. Force the yolks through a potato ricer or strainer and sprinkle them over the top.

  4. Garnish with parsley and remaining toast cut into points.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Melts with the flour to form the base of the white sauce and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk into a smooth white sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, which thickens as it is whisked in.
Hard boiled eggs
Chopped whites add body to the sauce, and pressed yolks add a crumbly, rich topping.
Toast
Provides a crisp base that holds the sauce and eggs.

The step that matters

Whisking in the milk. Adding milk gradually while whisking keeps the flour and butter mixture smooth. Adding it all at once lets lumps form, because the starch needs to disperse before it thickens the liquid.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, flour, milk, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, flour, milk, pepper. 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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