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To Fricassee Eggs

A dish of boiled eggs coated in flour, beaten egg, and seasoned breadcrumbs, then fried in lard and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Fricassee Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs for 5 minutes, then place them in cold water.

  2. Peel the eggs carefully and dredge them lightly with flour.

Coat the eggs

  1. Dip the eggs in the beaten egg, then roll them in the seasoned bread crumbs.

  2. Let the coated eggs stand for a while to dry.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the eggs in boiling lard until golden brown.

  2. Serve with rich, well-seasoned gravy and garnish with crispy 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Form the centre of the dish, cooked firm inside a crisp coating.
Flour
Gives the dry surface the beaten egg needs to grip, helping the coating adhere.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs stick evenly to each egg.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried.
Lard
Frying fat that conducts heat quickly, browning and crisping the coating.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until golden brown. The lard must be hot enough to set and brown the crumb coating quickly. If it is too cool, the coating absorbs grease and turns soggy, and the egg inside may overcook before the crust colours.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, bread, pepper, nutmeg. 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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