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Egg Chops

A fried dish of chopped hard‑boiled eggs, onion, celery, and milk‑based sauce coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Egg Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the hard boiled eggs, onion, and celery tips together, but not too finely.

  2. In a saucepan, combine milk and flour, and cook until thick to make a cream sauce.

  3. Mix the chopped ingredients with the cream sauce, seasoning with coarse sea salt and red pepper.

  4. Once the mixture is completely cold, form it into chops.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each chop into bread crumbs, then into beaten eggs, and again into bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the chops in hot lard until golden brown.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard boiled eggs
Form the bulk of the filling and give the chops their body.
Milk and flour cream sauce
Binds the chopped ingredients together and keeps the filling moist.
2 eggs
Beaten eggs act as a binder so the bread crumbs adhere to the chops.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer crust that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Chill the mixture completely before forming chops. Cooling firms the starch-thickened cream sauce so the filling holds its shape. Shaping a warm mixture makes it soft and likely to fall apart in the hot lard.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, celery, milk, 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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