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Egg Chops

Egg chops are fried egg pieces coated in breadcrumbs after being mixed with a thickened milk and flour paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs through a sieve and chop the whites finely.

  2. Heat the milk in a saucepan over medium heat.

  3. Mix the butter, flour, and raw egg in a bowl, adding a little warm milk to form a smooth paste.

  4. Stir the paste into the hot milk, adding pepper, salt, and onion juice if desired.

  5. Stir constantly until the mixture thickens and becomes smooth.

  6. Remove from heat and mix in the prepared eggs. Allow to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into chop shapes.

  2. Dip each shape in beaten egg.

  3. Coat each shape with fine bread crumbs.

  4. Fry the coated chops in boiling fat until golden brown.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish each chop with a sprig of parsley.

  2. Serve the chops on a platter with white sauce or green peas.

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

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the bulk of the chop filling, with chopped whites and sieved yolks giving texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into a smooth, binding custard-like mixture.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the mixture holds its shape when cooled and shaped.
Raw egg
Binds the paste and helps set the mixture so the chops hold together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the filling.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned outer coating when fried.

The step that matters

Stir constantly until the mixture thickens. Flour thickens milk only when it is stirred while heating; if left still it can scorch or form lumps, leaving a filling too thin or grainy to shape and hold together.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, butter, flour, pepper, bread, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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