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Parisienne Eggs

Layered dish of sliced hard‑boiled eggs, cream sauce, Parmesan cheese, tomatoes, and potato balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Parisienne Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the hard‑boiled eggs thinly and season with paprika, salt, parsley, and onion juice.

  2. Dip the egg slices in grated Parmesan cheese.

  3. Butter a baking dish and line it with seasoned sliced tomatoes.

  4. For the cream sauce, combine heavy cream, Parmesan cheese, cayenne pepper, salt, French mustard, English mustard, and lemon juice.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cover the tomatoes with a cream sauce, then add a layer of eggs, followed by more sauce, repeating until the dish is filled.

  2. Make the last layer of sauce decorative by forcing it through a tube.

  3. Garnish the dish with potato balls.

  4. Heat the dish in the oven until warmed through and browned.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Parsley + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard boiled eggs
Form the main layers, giving the dish its body and substance.
Heavy cream
Forms the rich sauce that moistens the layers and sets when heated.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury flavour and helps the sauce brown in the oven.
English mustard
Adds sharp pungency that cuts through the richness of the cream.
Sliced tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity to the base layer.

The step that matters

Heating the assembled dish. Heat must warm the eggs and set the cream sauce without boiling it, since overheated cream can separate and turn grainy. Stop once the top is golden.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, parsley, parmesan cheese, cream, pepper, mustard, lemon):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, parsley, parmesan cheese, cream, pepper, mustard, lemon. 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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