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Eggs a LA Tripe

Eggs à la Tripe is a dish of sliced eggs cooked in a buttered onion béchamel sauce with cream and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Eggs a LA Tripe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the onion base

  1. Finely mince the onions and fry them in butter without browning.

Add the sauce and eggs

  1. Add the béchamel sauce and cook gently for 10 minutes.

  2. Cut the eggs into large slices and add them to the sauce a few minutes before serving.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the cream and season to taste.

  2. Serve in a timbale.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide the main body of the dish as sliced pieces set gently in the sauce.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften in butter without browning.
Butter
Carries the onions and adds richness while they cook gently.
Béchamel sauce
Forms the creamy base that coats the eggs and gives the dish its body.
Cream
Adds smoothness and richness to the sauce at the end.

The step that matters

Cooking the onions without browning. Frying onions slowly over moderate heat softens them and draws out sweetness. If they brown, they turn bitter and darken the white sauce, changing its flavor and appearance.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, sauce, cream, pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sauce, cream, pepper, nutmeg. 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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