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Egg Vermicelli

A creamy sauce made from eggs, butter, flour, milk, and egg whites, served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Egg Vermicelli

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs for 20 minutes, then let them stand in cold water for 10 minutes.

  2. Separate the yolks and whites.

  3. Chop the whites very fine.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, cook the butter, flour, salt, and white pepper together.

  2. Add the milk and stir constantly until the mixture thickens.

  3. Stir in the chopped egg whites.

Serve

  1. Toast the bread slices.

  2. Pour the hot cream sauce over the toasted bread.

  3. Rub the yolks through a fine strainer over the dish.

  4. Garnish with 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Whites set and add body and texture, while the yolks add richness and a fine crumbly finish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and carries flavour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Rich milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and creaminess.
Bread
Provides a toasted base that soaks up the hot sauce.

The step that matters

Add the milk and stir constantly until the mixture thickens. Flour thickens milk only when it is stirred while heating. Stopping or letting it sit can scorch the bottom or leave lumps, so the sauce stays smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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