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French Eggs

A salad of chopped hard‑boiled eggs, onions, butter, and crushed biscuits, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and biscuit work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 428 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

French Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the hard-boiled eggs and boiled onions finely.

  2. In a bowl, combine the chopped eggs, onions, butter, crushed biscuits, salt, and pepper. Stir the mixture well.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer to a baking dish and bake until heated through.

  2. Serve warm.

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. Onion + biscuittop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Biscuit + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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 main body and protein structure of the salad.
Boiled onions
Add mild sweetness and savory moisture to the mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and keeping the mixture moist.
Biscuits
Crushed biscuits absorb moisture and add a crumbly texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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