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Fricasseed Eggs

Eggs coated in beaten yolk and bread crumbs, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Fricasseed Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the eggs for 6-7 minutes until hard enough to peel and slice.

  2. Place the boiled eggs in cold water to cool.

  3. Prepare seasoned bread crumbs with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Beat the yolks of 2-3 raw eggs until light.

  5. Peel and slice the boiled eggs, dust them with flour.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip the sliced eggs first in the beaten yolks, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Heat lard in a frying pan until boiling.

  3. Fry the coated eggs on both sides until golden.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with fried 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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Boiled and sliced eggs form the body of the dish, and raw yolks bind the coating.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.
Raw egg yolks
Act as a binder so the bread crumbs adhere to the sliced eggs.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and browns the crumb coating.
Flour
Dries the egg surface so the yolk coating sticks evenly.

The step that matters

Frying the coated eggs. Lard must be hot enough before the eggs go in, otherwise the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisp and golden. Turning once lets both sides brown evenly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, pepper, nutmeg, flour. 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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