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Egg Flowers

Egg Flowers is a dish of eggs cooked in lard and served on toast, seasoned with salt, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Flowers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Toast enough bread slices for each person.

  2. Dip the toast briefly in hot cream and place on a warm platter.

Fry the eggs

  1. Heat 1 tablespoon of lard in an iron skillet until very hot.

  2. Break each egg into a saucer and gently slip it into the hot fat.

  3. Baste the eggs with hot grease until the whites are set and the yolks are covered with a thin white veil.

Assemble and serve

  1. Carefully place an egg on each slice of toast.

  2. Season lightly with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Garnish with parsley.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 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

Eggs
Set whites and creamy yolks form the main body and richness of the dish.
Lard
Hot fat conducts heat to the eggs and gives the whites crisp, browned edges.
Bread slices
Provide a crisp base that holds the fried egg.
Hot cream
Softens the toast and adds moisture and richness.

The step that matters

Basting the eggs in hot fat. Spooning hot grease over the eggs cooks the whites on top without flipping, so they set while the yolks stay soft. Fat that is not hot enough makes the whites spread and cook slowly, and overcooking makes the yolks firm.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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

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