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Eggs Cocotte

Eggs Cocotte is a baked dish of eggs topped with cream, sauce, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Eggs Cocotte

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter individual baking dishes and line them with a mixture of fine bread crumbs and cream.

  3. Optionally, sprinkle the dish with finely chopped ham, chicken, or mushrooms mixed with a little cream and season with salt and pepper.

Bake and serve

  1. Break an egg into each dish and cook like shirred eggs.

  2. When done, cover the top with a little cream, tomato sauce, or béchamel sauce, and sprinkle with chopped 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set to a soft, tender texture in the dish as they cook.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the eggs silky rather than dry.
Fine bread crumbs
Soak up cream and butter to form a soft base under the egg.
Butter
Greases the dish and adds richness and flavor to the base.

The step that matters

Break an egg into each dish and cook like shirred eggs.. Eggs cook quickly once in the hot dish, so timing matters. Overcooking turns the white firm and dries the yolk, while a runny white means underdone protein. Watching for a set white with a soft yolk gives the best texture.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, cream, ham, pepper, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Celeryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, cream, ham, 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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