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Egg Vermicelli

A dish of boiled eggs mixed with a cream sauce and toasted bread squares, garnished with 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 ↓

Egg Vermicelli

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the eggs for 20 minutes.

  2. Separate the yolks and chop the whites finely.

  3. Toast the bread; cut half into small squares and half into points or triangles.

Make and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine cream or milk, butter, flour, salt, and pepper to make a thin white sauce.

  2. Stir the chopped egg whites into the hot sauce and pour it over the squares of toast.

  3. Rub the yolks through a fine strainer over the dish and garnish with toast points and 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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

Eggs
Whites set into the sauce for texture, and the rubbed yolks give a fine, crumbly topping.
Bread
Toasted pieces form the base and garnish, giving a crisp structure that holds the sauce.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, adding moisture and a smooth, rich texture.
Flour
Thickens the cream or milk into a white sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce, giving it a smooth mouthfeel and flavor.

The step that matters

Make a thin white sauce. Flour must be cooked into the fat and liquid while stirring so starch swells evenly. Adding it unevenly or without stirring can leave lumps and an uneven, pasty texture.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, cream, butter, flour, pepper. 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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