Skip to main content
Main

Creamed Eggs

A dish of boiled egg whites mixed with hot milk, flour, butter, salt, and pepper, served over toast with yolks on top.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Creamed Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the creamed eggs

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk and season with salt, pepper, and butter.

  2. Thicken the milk with 1 teaspoon of flour.

  3. Stir in the chopped egg whites.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over squares of toast arranged on a hot platter.

  2. Pass the yolks of the eggs through a ricer over the top.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Eggs
Chopped whites add body and substance, while the riced yolks make a crumbly garnish on top.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that coats the eggs and toast.
Flour
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth sauce that clings to the egg whites.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smoother, rounder flavor.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with flour. Flour must be stirred in well so its starch can swell in the hot milk. Added unevenly or in lumps, it leaves a pasty texture that does not coat the eggs smoothly.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes