Skip to main content
Main

Eggs a LA Royalb

A poached egg dish served in small molds with a truffle, ham, and Marsala sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Egg and ham match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 4,516 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the moulds

  1. Butter six small dariole moulds and sprinkle the sides and bottoms with chopped truffle peelings.

  2. Carefully break an egg into each mould, season with a pinch of cayenne and salt.

Poach the eggs

  1. Place the moulds in a sauté pan with hot water and cover with paper.

  2. Cook in the oven until the eggs are poached.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, fry the shallots, carrot, and ham in the remaining butter until finely chopped.

  2. Add the gravy, meat glaze, and wine; let reduce and strain through a fine sieve.

  3. Reheat the sauce.

Serve

  1. Unmould the egg dariole onto a hot dish, coat with the sauce, and serve immediately.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Egg + hamtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Truffle + hamtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together516 recipes

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

  4. Ham + meattop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

  5. Butter + winetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,517 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set to a firm, tender custard-like texture as they poach, forming the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and helps release the eggs from the moulds while carrying flavour into the sauce.
Truffle peelings
Contribute a strong earthy aroma that perfumes the eggs and the surrounding surface.
Shallots
Provide a mild sweet aromatic base for the sauce as they soften in butter.
Gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury body and depth of flavour.
Marsala wine
Reduces to add acidity and a sweet, fortified depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Poaching the eggs in the moulds. Eggs cooked in a hot water bath in a moderate oven set gently; too much heat makes the whites rubbery and the yolks chalky, so the water should stay below a hard boil and the paper covering should trap steam.

Flavor stand-ins for the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, truffle, shallot, ham, meat, wine):

  1. Asparagusbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Chivebetter flavor fit
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, truffle, shallot, ham, meat, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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

Illustration of Carrot SoupIllustrationCarrot Soup134 recipesIllustration of Meat CroquettesIllustrationMeat Croquettes52 recipesIllustration of MeatballsIllustrationMeatballs37 recipesIllustration of Mince MeatIllustrationMince Meat37 recipes