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Baking

CEufs a LA Tripe

A baked dish of hard‑boiled eggs in a white sauce with onions, seasoned with mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

CEufs a LA Tripe

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the white sauce

  1. Melt the butter, add flour, and gradually whisk in the milk until thickened.

  2. Stir in a little mace.

Prepare the onions

  1. Cook the sliced onions in a little butter until soft.

Bake and serve

  1. Combine the onions and halved hard-boiled eggs with the white sauce.

  2. Pour the mixture into a well-greased baking dish and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 10 minutes.

  3. Serve immediately on a hot 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth white sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and softens the onions, adding richness and flavour.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, which thickens as it heats.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they soften in butter.
Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the main body and protein of the dish, set and firm when baked.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, flour, butter, milk, onion, egg. 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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