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Eggs Brouille

Scrambled eggs with mushrooms, butter, milk, and spices, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Eggs Brouille

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the diced mushrooms in 1 tablespoon of butter for 1 minute.

  2. Beat the eggs, salt, pepper, and cream together in a bowl.

  3. Add the remaining butter and fried mushrooms to the egg mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Stir over moderate heat until the mixture begins to thicken.

  2. Remove from heat and beat rapidly until the eggs are thick and creamy.

  3. Serve the mixture on hot toast, garnished with toast points.

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

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

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a soft structure as they thicken, forming the body of the dish.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the eggs tender rather than dry.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the eggs cook gently without sticking.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a little moisture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Remove from heat and beat rapidly until the eggs are thick and creamy.. Eggs keep cooking from residual heat, so overcooking turns them dry and rubbery. Removing them from heat and beating quickly cools the curds and keeps the texture creamy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, mushroom, 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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