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Lyonnaise Eggs

A buttery, onion‑parsley sauce served over sliced hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lyonnaise Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Add the sliced onion and minced parsley, cooking until the onion is lightly browned.

  3. Dissolve the flour in the milk and add it to the dish, stirring for 2-3 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Gently lay in the sliced hard-boiled eggs and let them simmer for a few minutes, handling carefully to avoid breaking.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Butter
Fat that enriches the flavour and helps the onion brown.
Onion
Provides sweetness and savoury depth as it browns.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a light, smooth sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding creaminess.
Hard-boiled eggs
Main protein, held in the sauce so they take on its flavour.

The step that matters

Gently lay in the sliced hard-boiled eggs. Cooked egg whites are delicate and tear easily when moved. Lowering the slices gently into a barely simmering sauce keeps them intact and prevents the sauce from becoming too hot and tough.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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