Make Eggs And Toast 10X Better With A Creamy, Old-School Method

There may not be a dish that better exemplifies breakfast than eggs and toast. There are a thousand ways that it can be served, the eggs can be fried, scrambled, sunny side up, the toast can come with butter and jam or olive oil and salt, and all sorts of other additions can come on the side. Even a fancy sourdough avocado toast with poached eggs and asparagus fits the bill. But there's one classic eggs-and-bread breakfast in particular that is due for a resurgence: creamed eggs on toast.

If you've never heard of this particular morning meal, we don't blame you, this is a dish that is said to have gotten its start back in the Depression and has long since gone out of style. Despite the trying times of its origin, however, this is a recipe that could easily be adapted to modern tastes — particularly with a few choice alterations. The dish itself is a simple combination of chopped hard-boiled eggs and creamy white sauce — also known as bechamel. It is easy to prepare, requiring only basic culinary skills and the most humble of ingredients — eggs, butter, flour, and milk — but is nevertheless a decadently creamy way to start the day.

To make this dish at home, all you really need is a good hard-boiled egg recipe and the knowledge of how to make a roux and thin it out with milk. Cook up two hard-boiled eggs, one slice of toast, and about a half-cup of sauce per serving, chop the eggs into the sauce, ladle it over the toast, and breakfast is served.

At its simplest, it is a creamy and delicious breakfast, but perhaps a bit drab. What recipes on the dull side of the spectrum invite, however, is creativity — and creamed eggs on toast is begging for a few interesting tweaks to maximize its potential on the plate.

Hard boiled eggs are well and good, but the quality of your creamed eggs really hinges on the sauce. Bechamel is often seasoned with just salt and pepper — sometimes a bit of nutmeg — but a creamy sauce like this takes on a ton of flavor from just a small dose of spice. Some folks add a bit of garlic or onion powder to the mix, ground mustard and paprika, or even a sprinkle of chicken bouillon, but you can really feel free to play here with your favorite herbs and spices and make this dish your own.

While we're tinkering with the sauce, though, we might as well look at all of the bechamel-based sauces out there. Mix in a bit of cheese — typically Gruyère — and you have yourself a classic French Mornay sauce. A bit of Dijon mustard is all it takes to deliver a creamy mustard sauce. With some tomato puree, it becomes a lovely pink sauce aurore. There are plenty of bechamel-based sauces to choose from, or you can opt to follow your own culinary instincts. There may not be a name for bechamel spiked with pesto, sriracha, or chili crisp, but all three of those sauces go great with eggs, and would likely go great here. Simple, delicious breakfast food is always a win, and all this dish needs is a little cleverness to bring it into the 21st century.