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Eggs and Chestnuts

A stew of sliced sausages, carrot, chestnuts, butter, stock, and sherry, served over fried eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Eggs and Chestnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. In a stewpan, combine the sausages, boiled carrot, roasted chestnuts, butter, and white stock.

  2. Cook gently for 20 minutes, stirring continuously.

  3. Add sherry, pepper, and salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the fried eggs on a serving dish.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Carrot + chestnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together186 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chestnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Carrot + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sausages
Provide savoury meat flavour and fat that enrich the stew.
Roasted chestnuts
Add a soft, starchy texture and a mild, nutty sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and smooths the sauce.
White stock
Supplies liquid that moistens the mixture and carries savoury flavour.
Fried eggs
Form the base the stew is poured over, adding richness from their yolks.

The step that matters

Cook gently for 20 minutes, stirring continuously. Gentle heat keeps the stock from boiling hard, which can toughen the sausage and break down the chestnuts unevenly. Constant stirring prevents the starches and proteins from sticking and scorching on the base of the pan.

Swap the chestnut

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

  1. Peasfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Chestnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, butter, sherry, pepper, egg. 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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