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Scotch Eggs

Hard-boiled eggs coated with a seasoned meat mixture, rolled in bread, and deep-fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Scotch Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the meat mixture

  1. Mix the flour smoothly in a little of the milk, then heat the rest of the milk over boiling water until hot.

  2. Stir the flour mixture into the hot milk and cook until thick like cream.

  3. Pour the mixture over small pieces of butter, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and mix with the chicken and ham. Let it cool.

Coat the eggs

  1. Remove the shells from the hard-boiled eggs and cover them evenly with the meat mixture, preserving the shape of the eggs.

  2. Cover the meat-coated eggs with the beaten yolks, roll them in grated bread, and place in a frying basket.

Fry and serve

  1. Deep fry in hot lard until golden brown, then drain on brown paper and serve on a napkin in a circle, garnished with curled parsley.

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. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
The hard-boiled eggs form the core, and beaten yolks help the outer coating stick.
Chicken or veal
Forms the savoury meat layer that wraps around the eggs.
Ham
Adds a salty, savoury flavour to the meat layer.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a cream-like sauce that binds the meat mixture together.
Milk
Becomes a thick binding sauce with the flour, giving the meat mixture moisture and cohesion.
Grated bread
Forms a crumb coating that browns and crisps in the hot lard.

The step that matters

Deep fry in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is too cool, the coating soaks up grease and may fall apart; if it is too hot, the crumbs brown before the meat layer and egg are heated through.

“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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