Skip to main content
Main

Egg Vermicelli

A creamy sauce made from egg yolk, white, butter, flour, and cream, served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the egg

  1. Separate the yolk and white of the egg.

  2. Chop the white and keep the yolk warm.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter.

  2. Stir in the flour, and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Gradually add the cream or milk, stirring until thickened.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Add the chopped egg white to the sauce.

  6. Heat thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the toast.

  2. Press the yolk through a strainer on top.

  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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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
Egg white adds body and protein-based texture, while the strained yolk gives a rich, crumbly topping.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the base before the flour is cooked in.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked briefly in butter, forming a roux.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and richness as it thickens.

The step that matters

Gradually add the cream or milk, stirring until thickened. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the roux smooth; adding it all at once can leave lumps. Starch thickens as the sauce heats, so the sauce should be stirred until it coats a spoon.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, flour, pepper, cream. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes