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Hard Boiled Eggs with White Sauce

Hard boiled eggs topped with white sauce, optionally seasoned with grated onion and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,849 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hard Boiled Eggs with White Sauce

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. Hard boil the eggs, then peel and cut them in halves.

  2. Prepare 1 pint of white sauce.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the eggs in a baking dish and cover them with the white sauce.

  2. Season the sauce with grated onion if desired, and sprinkle grated cheese on top.

  3. Bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) to heat through.

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. Onion + cheesetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,849 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + cheesetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Egg + cheesetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + oniontop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,333 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Sauce and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 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
Form the main body of the dish, providing protein structure that holds its shape when heated.
White sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy texture that keeps the eggs from drying out in the oven.
Grated cheese
Melts and browns on top, adding savory flavor and a golden surface.

The step that matters

Bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) to heat through. Baking only needs to heat the eggs and sauce through. Overbaking can cause the white sauce to thicken, separate or dry out, and the cheese to toughen.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sauce, cheese):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sauce, cheese. 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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