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Egg Vermicelli

Egg Vermicelli is a dish of boiled eggs mixed with a cream sauce, served over toasted bread.

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, then separate the yolks and chop the whites finely.

  2. Toast the bread, cut it into squares, and then into triangles.

Make and serve

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

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

  3. Rub the yolks through a fine strainer over the dish, garnish with toast triangles, and place a bit of parsley in the center.

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. Butter + breadtop 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 add body to the sauce, and the yolks give a crumbly, rich garnish.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and a creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and carries flavor.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a sauce that clings to the toast.
Bread
Serves as the crisp, absorbent base that holds the sauce.

The step that matters

Make and serve the sauce while hot. Flour thickens the liquid as it heats, so the sauce should be cooked until smooth and thick before it is poured. Pouring it over toast while hot keeps it loose enough to soak in and coat the bread evenly.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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