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Eggs and Bacon Ragout

A savory dish of boiled eggs filled with chopped white meat, parsley, anchovy, shallot, butter, mushroom ketchup, cayenne, bread crumbs, and mace, served over bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Eggs and Bacon Ragout

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs for 10 minutes, then transfer them to cold water.

  2. Peel the eggs and cut them in half.

Make the filling

  1. In a mortar, pound the yolks with the chopped white meat, parsley, anchovy, shallot, butter, mushroom ketchup, cayenne, bread crumbs, and mace until well combined.

  2. Fill the egg white halves with the mixture.

Brown and serve

  1. Brush the filled halves with beaten egg yolk.

  2. Brown them in a Dutch oven.

  3. Serve on top of crispy bacon or ham.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 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

Eggs
Provide the main body of the dish, with yolks forming the creamy filling and whites holding it.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the yolk filling into a spreadable mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smoother, softer texture.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth, contributing a salty, umami flavour to the filling.
Cooked white meat of fowl or veal
Adds body and substance to the filling, giving it a meaty texture.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Brown them in a Dutch oven. Browning sets the surface and develops colour through the Maillard reaction. Too little heat leaves the egg-yolk coating pale and underdeveloped, while too much can scorch it before the filling is heated through.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, meat, anchovy, shallot, butter, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, meat, anchovy, shallot, butter, mushroom, ketchup. 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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