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Egg Dishes

A fried bread and egg mixture served as a side dish with meat or gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Egg Dishes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak the hard bread in hot water or milk until softened.

  2. In a bowl, mix the soaked bread with onion, parsley, egg, salt, and pepper.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat butter or beef fat in a frying pan.

  2. Pour the mixture into the pan, cover, and bake for 5 minutes.

  3. Uncover and brown the top, then serve around meat or with gravy.

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard bread
Softened by soaking, it forms the body of the fritter and holds the mixture together.
Egg
Binds the soaked bread and onion so the fritter sets firm when cooked.
Onion
Adds moisture and savory sweetness that flavors the fritter as it cooks.
Butter or beef fat
Conducts heat in the pan and browns the surface of the fritter for flavor.

The step that matters

Uncover and brown the top. Cooking covered traps steam and sets the inside, but the top only browns once the lid is removed. Leaving it covered too long leaves the surface pale and soft rather than golden.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, parsley, egg, pepper, butter. 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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