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Starched Eggs

Hard-boiled eggs halved and served in a seasoned milk and flour sauce with parsley and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Starched Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the hard boiled eggs in half and keep them hot.

  2. In a saucepan, bring the milk to a boil.

Make the sauce

  1. Once boiling, add the flour, butter, salt, cayenne pepper, and parsley.

  2. Cook the sauce until the flour is fully cooked.

  3. Pour the sauce over the eggs.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Hard boiled eggs form the base of the dish, served halved in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce and helps carry flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce until the flour is fully cooked. Flour must be cooked long enough for its starch to swell and thicken the sauce, and to lose its raw, pasty taste. Undercooked flour leaves the sauce thin and floury.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, milk, cream, butter, 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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