Skip to main content
Main

Egg Friandises

Eggs wrapped in puff pastry, fried and served with tomato or piquante sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Egg Friandises

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the eggs

  1. Poach the eggs in slightly salted water with lemon juice or vinegar for 3-4 minutes until set.

  2. Remove the eggs using an egg shoe, trim, and let them cool.

Assemble the pastry

  1. Roll out the puff pastry thinly and cut out double the number of rounds as there are eggs.

  2. Place a well‑drained egg in the center of a pastry round, wet the edges, and cover with another round.

  3. Press the edges together to seal and repeat with remaining eggs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the friandises in hot fat until golden brown.

  2. Drain on a cloth, garnish with fried parsley, and serve with tomato or piquante sauce.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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
Set in the pastry as the filling, firming when poached and forming the centre of each parcel.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, layered casing that puffs and crisps when fried in hot fat.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Acid in the poaching water helps the egg whites set more neatly.

The step that matters

Drain the poached eggs well before wrapping. Any water left on the egg will turn to steam in hot fat and can make the pastry soggy or split the seal. Thorough draining and cooling keep the pastry crisp and sealed.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, 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 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes