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Eggs in Bread Sauce

Eggs baked in a sauce of milk, onion, cloves, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Eggs in Bread Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the onion milk

  1. Slice the onion and pour boiling water over it.

  2. Let the onion stand for 5 minutes, then drain the water from the onion.

  3. Cover the onion with milk and add the cloves.

  4. Add salt to the mixture.

  5. Simmer the mixture for 30 minutes.

  6. Rub the mixture through a sieve, pressing as much onion as possible through.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan and mix it with flour.

  2. Add the milk and onion mixture to the saucepan and stir until smooth.

  3. Stir in bread crumbs, salt, white pepper and mace.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the sauce to a baking dish.

  2. Carefully slip in the eggs.

  3. Bake in a very hot oven until the eggs are set.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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 the body of the dish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.
Butter and flour
Together form a roux that thickens the milk into a sauce.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help thicken the sauce.
Spanish onion
Infuses the milk with sweet, mild onion flavour.

The step that matters

Baking until the eggs are set. Eggs firm as their proteins coagulate with heat; too little baking leaves the whites runny, while overbaking makes them rubbery and dry.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, milk, clove, butter, flour, bread, mace):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, milk, clove, butter, flour, bread, mace. 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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