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Fricasseed Eggs

Eggs cooked in a butter‑flour‑milk sauce with parsley, lemon, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fricasseed Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Stir in the flour.

  3. Add the milk or cream.

  4. Stir until boiling.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the hard boiled eggs into quarters.

  2. Add the quarters to the mixture.

  3. Add the parsley, pepper, and salt.

  4. Cook for five minutes.

  5. Serve.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and a creamy texture.
Hard boiled eggs
Provide the main body of the dish, held in the sauce as its protein.

The step that matters

Stir until boiling. Flour needs to be stirred constantly while the liquid heats so it dissolves evenly; stopping early leaves lumps, and the sauce only thickens fully once it reaches a boil.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

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

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