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To Fricassee Eggs

Fricassee eggs are boiled eggs coated in flour, beaten egg, and seasoned breadcrumbs, then fried and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Fricassee Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs for 5 minutes.

  2. Place them in cold water and peel carefully.

  3. Dredge the eggs lightly with flour.

  4. Dip the eggs in the beaten egg.

  5. Roll the eggs in the seasoned bread crumbs, covering them well.

  6. Let the eggs stand to dry.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the eggs in boiling lard until golden.

  2. Serve with rich gravy and garnish with crispy 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Form the main body of the dish and set firm when boiled and fried.
Flour
Gives the beaten egg a dry surface to cling to.
Beaten egg
Acts as a sticky layer that holds the bread crumbs in place.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and browns the coating.

The step that matters

Let the eggs stand to dry. If the flour and egg coating is still wet when the eggs go into the hot lard, the crumbs can slip off or steam instead of browning. Drying lets the coating set before frying.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, bread, pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, bread, 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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