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Dessert

Easter Eggs

Easter Eggs made from blanc-mange, colored yolks, chocolate, and wine jelly, served with candied peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Easter Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Prepare 1 quart of blanc-mange as usual.

  2. Empty 12 egg-shells through a small hole and rinse well with cold water.

  3. Divide the blanc-mange into 4 parts.

Colour the mixtures

  1. Leave one part white.

  2. Stir 2 beaten yolks into another part.

  3. Add chocolate to a third part.

  4. Add cochineal coloring to the fourth part.

  5. Heat the yellow mixture until the egg is cooked.

Fill and set

  1. Fill the shells with the various mixtures, 3 of each color.

  2. Set the filled shells upright in a pan of meal or flour to keep them steady and leave until the next day.

Serve

  1. Fill a glass bowl more than three-quarters full with nice wine jelly, broken into sparkling fragments.

  2. Carefully break away the egg-shells from the blanc-mange.

  3. Pile the vari-colored 'eggs' on the bed of jelly and lay shredded preserved orange-peel or finely shredded candied citron around them.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chocolate + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + chocolatetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

  4. Chocolate + winetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together284 recipes

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

  5. Flour + winetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Blanc-mange
Forms the set white body of each egg, holding its shape once chilled.
Egg yolks
Enrich the yellow mixture with richness and colour, and set firmly when heated.
Chocolate
Adds flavour and a brown colour to one portion of the blanc-mange.
Cochineal coloring
Gives one portion of the blanc-mange a red colour without changing its texture.
Meal or flour
Packed around the shells so they stand upright and stay steady while setting.
Wine jelly
Forms the sparkling bed that supports the eggs when served.

The step that matters

Heating the yellow mixture until the egg is cooked. Raw egg yolk will not set and can carry bacteria. Heating it gently until thickened cooks the yolk so the mixture sets firmly and is safe to eat, without curdling it into grains.

“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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