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Egg Vermicelli

Egg vermicelli is a dish of toasted bread topped with a creamy egg sauce and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Egg Vermicelli

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Separate the yolk and white of the egg and chop the white.

  2. Keep the yolk warm.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a white sauce by melting the butter, adding flour, and gradually stirring in cream or milk.

  2. Add the chopped egg white to the sauce and heat thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the toast.

  2. Press the yolk through a strainer over the dish and garnish with toast points and 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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

Egg
Provides the chopped white and the yolk, which is pressed through a strainer for the topping.
Butter
Melts with the flour to form the base of the white sauce, adding richness.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and cream or milk into a white sauce.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid of the white sauce, adding moisture and a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Make the white sauce. Flour must be cooked briefly in melted butter before the liquid is added, and the cream or milk should be stirred in gradually. Adding it too fast can cause lumps, while stirring keeps the sauce smooth as it thickens.

“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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