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Egg Pies

A baked pastry filled with eggs, cream, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,308 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Egg Pies

Oven, in the book's wordsA sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a sharp oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Grease a pie dish.

  2. Carefully break in enough eggs to fill the dish without breaking the yolks.

Season and assemble

  1. Add ½ teaspoon of cream and 1 teaspoon of runny butter for each egg.

  2. Season with white pepper, coarse sea salt, chopped parsley, and garlic if desired.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with a top crust, cut slits in it, and bake immediately at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Bake until the pastry is a delicate brown and the eggs are just set, not hard.

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. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

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

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

  3. White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a tender, sliceable structure as their proteins coagulate in the oven.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the set eggs silky rather than dry.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the eggs a smoother, more rounded flavour.

The step that matters

Stop baking when the eggs are just set. Egg proteins set firmly with heat, and overbaking makes them rubbery and can squeeze out liquid. Removing the pie while the centre still looks slightly soft lets residual heat finish the set.

Swap the garlic

The recipe marks garlic as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, butter, white pepper, parsley):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Garlicthe original

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

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