Skip to main content
Main

Lyonnaise Eggs

Eggs served in a butter‑onion sauce with milk and flour, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 pan.

  2. Add the sliced onion and cook slightly without browning.

  3. Dissolve the flour in the milk and add it to the pan. Stir for 2 to 3 minutes.

Finish and serve

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

  2. Just before serving, add the minced parsley.

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. Flour + parsleytop 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
Adds fat and flavour to the pan, helping the onion cook gently.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens in the butter.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that coats the eggs.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding creaminess.
Hard boiled eggs
Provide the main body of the dish, held gently in the sauce.

The step that matters

Lay in the eggs gently. Hard boiled egg slices are delicate and break easily when stirred or handled roughly. Adding them gently and letting the sauce simmer rather than boil vigorously keeps the slices intact and the sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes