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Baked Eggs

Eggs baked in a crumb mixture of bread, milk, butter, cheese, broth, onion, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Eggs

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in hot milk for 20 minutes.

  2. Stir in butter, egg yolk, cheese, broth, onion, and parsley.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pie plate and cover.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 6 minutes.

  2. Remove the cover.

  3. Break eggs on top.

  4. Sprinkle with fine crumbs.

  5. Bake for an additional 3 minutes and serve in the dish.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb the hot milk and form a soft, spoonable base that holds the mixture together.
Hot milk
Moistens the crumbs and keeps the base tender during baking.
Egg yolk
Binds the base and adds richness to the custard-like layer.
Eggs
Set as they bake, forming the firm whites that give the dish its structure.
Cheese
Adds savory flavor and helps the top brown lightly.

The step that matters

Timing the bake after the eggs go on. Egg whites set at moderate heat while yolks stay soft and runny. Baking too long or too hot makes the yolks firm and the whites tough, so check the eggs during the final bake.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, butter, egg, cheese, onion):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, butter, egg, cheese, onion. 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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