Name: Fricasseed Eggs
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons butter; 1 tablespoon flour; 1 sprig parsley, finely chopped; 6 minced mushrooms; ½ pint white stock (veal or chicken); 6 hard-boiled eggs, sliced

Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Fricasseed Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter in a chafing dish.
Add the flour, stirring constantly.
Stir in the parsley, mushrooms, and stock.
Simmer for 5 minutes.
Add the sliced eggs and bring to a boil.
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.

Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,132 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,675 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mushroom + vealtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,446 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

Butter: Enriches the sauce with fat and adds a rich, savoury flavour.
Flour: Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bound sauce.
Mushrooms: Add earthy flavour and a tender, savoury texture to the sauce.
White stock: Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the flavour of the dish.
Hard-boiled eggs: Provide the main body of the dish, adding protein and a soft, creamy texture.

Swap the parsley

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

Capersfits about as well
Nutmegfits about as well
Parsleythe original
Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, mushroom, veal, egg. 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.