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Fried Eggs a LA Provengale

Fried eggs served on tomatoes with parsley, spinach, anchovy fillets, and olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fried Eggs a LA Provengale

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the flour.

  2. Prepare spinach by adding diced anchovy fillets and chopped olives.

  3. Fry parsley until crisp.

Fry the eggs

  1. Roll each fried egg in the seasoned flour.

  2. Fry the eggs in oil until golden.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place each fried egg on a half tomato.

  2. Set the eggs in a circle on a dish.

  3. Place the fried parsley in the center.

  4. Serve the fried eggs on a little dish of spinach.

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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Parsley + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Spinach + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + spinachtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Form the main dish; the whites set and the yolks stay soft when fried briefly.
Flour
Forms a light coating that helps the egg crisp and brown in the oil.
Tomato
Adds moisture and acidity that balance the rich fried egg.
Anchovy fillets
Add salty, savory depth to the spinach.
Olives
Add briny flavor and a salty contrast to the spinach.

The step that matters

Fry the eggs in oil until golden. Oil must be hot enough to brown the flour coating quickly; if it is too cool the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy, and if the eggs fry too long the yolks become firm.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, parsley, spinach, anchovy, olive):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, parsley, spinach, anchovy, olive. 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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