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Egg Vermicelli

A sauce of milk, butter, flour, and pepper mixed with mashed egg whites, poured over buttered toast, topped with yolks 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 Vermicelli

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs for 20 minutes.

  2. Once cooled, separate the whites from the yolks and mash the whites finely with a fork.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine milk, butter, flour, and pepper in a saucepan. Stir until smooth.

  2. Stir the mashed egg whites into the sauce. Heat gently.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the buttered toast.

  2. Press the yolks through a ricer over the toast.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Egg whites thicken the sauce and yolks give a crumbly, rich topping.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the sauce and toast.
Bread
Provides a base that soaks up the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the mashed egg whites into the sauce and heat gently. Egg proteins set when overheated, so gentle heat keeps the whites tender and prevents a grainy or curdled sauce.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, 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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