Name: Egg Sauce
Ingredients: 3 hard-boiled eggs, diced; Salt, to taste; Pepper, to taste; Minced onions, to taste; 2 teaspoons parsley, minced; 2 teaspoons thyme, minced; ½ cup drawn butter

Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 ↓

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Dice the hard-boiled eggs into small pieces.
In a bowl, combine the diced eggs, salt, pepper, minced onions, parsley, and thyme.
Add the mixture to the drawn butter and stir well.

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.

Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,171 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs: Provide the main body and texture of the sauce as diced pieces.
Drawn butter: Adds richness and fat, carrying the flavors and giving the sauce a smooth, flowing base.
Parsley: Adds fresh, green aroma and a light herbal flavor.
Thyme: Adds earthy, savory aroma that complements the eggs and butter.

Swap the onion

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

Shallotfits better
Carrotfits better
Leekfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, parsley, thyme, 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.