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Nutmese À LA Crême

Nutmese and chopped hard-boiled eggs layered with a stiff sauce and baked in a pudding dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Evora Bucknum Perkins · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 25,834 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Nutmese À LA Crême

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Add onion to hot oil and simmer slowly without browning, for 10 m.

  2. Add flour, rub smooth, pour on hot water, stir until smooth and well cooked.

  3. Remove from fire, add parsley, salt and beaten egg.

Assemble and bake

  1. Break nutmese into irregular pieces with a fork and mix it with the eggs, chopped coarse and ¾ teaspn. salt.

  2. Put sauce, and nutmese with eggs, into pudding dish, in layers, with sauce on top.

  3. Sprinkle with crumbs, corn meal or browned flour No. 1.

  4. Bake in moderate oven until bubbling all through and delicately browned on top.

By Evora Bucknum Perkins. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Onion + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together25,834 recipes

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

  2. Flour + eggtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together104,138 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together16,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together18,323 recipes

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

  5. Onion + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together31,198 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg share little aroma chemistry, yet 104,138 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Nutmese
Forms the main layered body of the dish, setting into a firm, sliceable base.
Eggs
Bind the layers and set during baking to give the dish a custard-like structure.
Flour
Thickens the hot water and oil into a smooth, stiff sauce that holds the layers together.
Onion
Softened slowly in oil to add mild sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the onion slowly without browning. Gentle simmering softens the onion and sweetens it while keeping the oil pale. Browning would make the sauce taste bitter and darken its colour.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  3. Arrowrootbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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