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Fricasseed Eggs

A dish of sliced hard‑boiled eggs simmered in a seasoned broth, served over fried stale bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 the eggs

  1. Slice the cold hard-boiled eggs carefully, keeping the yolks intact.

  2. Rub the egg slices with melted butter, then roll them in flour.

Make the gravy

  1. In a saucepan, combine the broth, black pepper, coarse sea salt, parsley, and onion; bring to a boil.

  2. Gently place the egg slices in the gravy and heat on the side of the range until hot, but do not let it boil.

  3. Let the eggs sit in the gravy for at least 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Fry the stale bread slices in butter or dripping until light brown.

  2. Arrange the fried bread on a platter.

  3. Place the sliced eggs on top.

  4. Pour the gravy over everything.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Form the main body of the dish, with yolks kept whole for a neat presentation.
Broth
Forms the savoury gravy that moistens and flavours the eggs and bread.
Flour (in the method)
Coats the egg slices, helping the gravy cling and thicken slightly around them.
Stale bread
Fried in butter until golden, giving a crisp base that soaks up the gravy.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma to the gravy.

The step that matters

Heat the eggs without boiling. Boiling the gravy can toughen the egg whites and break up the yolks, so heat gently until hot only.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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