Skip to main content
Main

Neapolitan Eggs

A creamy egg dish with sliced mushrooms, chopped spaghetti, and seasonings, served hot with fried hominy or polenta.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Neapolitan Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the butter.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and cook until they thicken.

  4. Mix in the sliced mushrooms and chopped spaghetti.

  5. Season with pepper, salt, and onion juice.

  6. Cook until hot and serve on a hot platter with fried hominy or polenta.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken as they cook to form the soft, creamy body of the dish.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the eggs tender rather than dry.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky texture.
Mushrooms
Add savory, earthy flavor and a bit of moisture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Add the beaten eggs and cook until they thicken. Eggs set through protein coagulation, and cooking them gently over low heat while stirring keeps them creamy. Overheating makes them tight, grainy and watery.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, mushroom, 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.

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes