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Fricasseed Eggs

Eggs served in a seasoned gravy with thyme, parsley, nutmeg, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fricasseed Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs hard.

  2. Remove some yolks whole and cut the rest into quarters, yolks and whites together.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the gravy with thyme and parsley for about a minute.

  2. Add the eggs and nutmeg, then stir in the butter until thickened.

Serve

  1. Pour into a dish and serve with fancy shaped pieces of toast.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide the main body of the dish, with whites and yolks setting into soft pieces.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, glossy texture.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base that carries the eggs and thickens into a sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter until thickened. Stirring the sauce gently over moderate heat keeps it smooth; if it gets too hot, the egg proteins can tighten and curdle, and the sauce turns grainy.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, nutmeg, parsley. 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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