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Daisy Eggs

A baked dish of riced egg whites and yolks layered with white sauce and bread crumbs, topped with toasted bread strips and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Daisy Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Separate the whites and yolks of the hard boiled eggs.

  2. Save the whites of 2 eggs to cut into strips for decoration.

  3. Prepare 1 pint of white sauce.

  4. Run the egg whites through a ricer, then do the same with the yolks, keeping them separate.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add the riced whites to the sauce, layering it with the yolks and sprinkling with bread crumbs.

  2. Cover the top with crumbs, yolks, and bits of butter.

  3. Form daisies with the white strips and yellow yolks for centers.

  4. Bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for 10 to 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Garnish with parsley and serve on a plate with toasted bread.

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

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

  2. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  3. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + breadtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + parsleytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,693 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 of the dish, with whites for structure and yolks for color and richness.
White sauce
Binds the egg pieces together and keeps the dish moist during baking.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping when baked in the oven.

The step that matters

Forming the daisies. Yolks and white strips are delicate and can break or smear when arranged on the sauce. Keeping the yolks firm and the strips intact gives clean shapes that hold through baking.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sauce, bread. 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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