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Eggs with Cream Cheese Sauce

Hard‑boiled eggs topped with a creamy cheese sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Eggs with Cream Cheese Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Stir in the flour.

  3. Add the milk and stir until boiling.

  4. Add the cheese, cream, mustard, pepper, and salt.

  5. Boil until the cheese is dissolved.

Assemble and serve

  1. Remove the shells from the eggs and cut them into quarters.

  2. Place the eggs on a dish and pour the sauce over them.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and gives it a rich flavour as the base for the roux.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, stable sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce that the flour thickens.
Cheese
Melts into the sauce to give it savoury flavour and a creamy body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil until the cheese is dissolved. Cheese sauces can turn grainy or stringy if they boil too hard or too long, because the proteins tighten and separate from the fat. Keep the heat gentle once the cheese is in, stirring until it melts smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cheese, butter, flour, milk, cream, 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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