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Eggs with Cream Dressing

A creamy dressing made from butter, flour, milk, salt, pepper, and chopped egg whites, served over toast with whole eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Cream butter and flour in a saucepan over medium heat until butter melts.

  2. Gradually add milk, stirring constantly until mixture thickens.

  3. Stir in salt and pepper.

  4. Separate egg whites from yolks, finely chop whites, and add to dressing.

Serve

  1. Arrange toast slices on a hot platter and pour dressing over them.

  2. Pass yolks through a ricer onto toast and dressing, and 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. Butter + milktop 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 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

Butter
Enriches the dressing and carries flavour while the flour cooks into a smooth base.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the dressing by absorbing liquid as it heats with the butter and milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as the starch swells with heat.
Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the chopped whites that add texture and the pressed yolks that add richness and colour.

The step that matters

Adding the milk gradually. Pouring the milk in slowly while stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

“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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