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Egg Broccoli

A baked broccoli dish with a thickened egg mixture poured over boiled broccoli and topped with fried blossoms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Egg Broccoli

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broccoli

  1. Cut off the small shoots or blossoms of the broccoli and set aside for frying.

  2. Trim the stalks short and pare off the rough rind up to the head.

  3. Wash the broccoli well and soak in salt water for 1 hour.

  4. Boil plenty of salted water and cook the broccoli until tender.

Make the egg sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Gradually add the beaten eggs to the melted butter, stirring until thick and smooth.

Assemble

  1. Place the broccoli in the center of a large dish, pour the egg mixture around it, and arrange the fried blossoms in a circle near the edge.

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 + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Broccoli + buttertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Broccoli + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Broccoli
Forms the bulk of the dish and provides its main vegetable flavor and texture.
Eggs
Thicken with the melted butter as they cook, forming a smooth, set custard-like sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, adding richness and smoothness to the eggs.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs into the melted butter. Eggs scrambled or cooked too quickly over heat can curdle and turn grainy. Adding them gradually over low heat while stirring lets the proteins set slowly, giving a thick, smooth sauce.

Swap the broccoli

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Broccolithe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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