Skip to main content
Main

Eggs Like Tripe

Eggs served in a sauce of sautéed pickled onions, flour, stock, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Eggs Like Tripe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Hard boil the eggs and slice them.

  2. Peel the small pickling onions and fry them gently in butter over low heat.

  3. Dust the onions with flour.

Make the sauce

  1. Moisten the onions with equal parts stock and cream, then add salt and pepper.

  2. Stew the mixture until the onions are tender.

  3. Add the sliced eggs and warm everything together.

  4. Serve hot.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Eggs
Form the main body of the dish, set firm by hard boiling before slicing.
Small pickling onions
Soften and turn sweet and tender as they fry gently and then stew.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while gently frying the onions.
Flour
Dusted on the onions to help thicken the sauce as it stews.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, making the sauce smooth and mellow.

The step that matters

Stew the mixture until the onions are tender. Flour needs gentle heat and enough time to cook through, or the sauce stays pasty and tastes raw. Low, steady heat also keeps the cream from catching or curdling.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, flour, cream, pepper. 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.

You might also like