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Eggs a LA Turk

A dish of poached egg served on buttered toast with a sauce of browned chicken liver, mushroom, onion, and truffles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Eggs a LA Turk

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Brown the chicken liver and mushroom in butter for 1 minute.

  2. Add chopped onion, salt, pepper, and flour. Beat until smooth.

  3. Stir in sherry and enough brown stock to make a sauce.

  4. Add lemon juice and chopped truffles.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the poached egg on the buttered toast.

  2. Serve the sauce around it.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken liver
Browns in butter to add savory, meaty depth to the sauce.
Butter
Carries browning and adds richness to the liver, mushroom and toast.
Flour
Thickens the browned mixture so it can form a smooth sauce with the stock.
Brown stock
Liquid base that turns the thickened mixture into a sauce.
Sherry
Adds a sweet, fortified wine flavor to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Beat until smooth. Flour must be fully blended into the fat and onion before liquid is added, or it forms lumps that stay in the sauce. Smooth mixing lets the stock thicken it evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, liver, mushroom, butter, pepper, flour, sherry):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, liver, mushroom, butter, pepper, flour, sherry. 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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