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Egg Vermicelli

Egg Vermicelli is a dish of boiled eggs served over toast with a creamy milk sauce and sprinkled yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Egg Vermicelli

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Place the eggs in boiling water and boil for 20 minutes.

  2. Transfer the eggs to cold water until cool, then remove the shells.

  3. Chop the egg whites very fine and rub the yolks through a sieve or potato strainer.

Make the white sauce

  1. In a double boiler, heat the milk until boiling.

  2. Rub the butter and corn-starch together, then add to the boiling milk.

  3. Stir until creamy, then add the chopped whites, salt, and pepper.

Assemble and serve

  1. Wet the edges of the toast, lightly butter it, and place on a warm dish.

  2. Cover the toast with the white sauce, distributing it evenly.

  3. Sprinkle the strained yolks on top and serve immediately with a little salt and pepper.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites are chopped into the sauce for body and texture, while sieved yolks give a crumbly, rich topping.
Corn-starch
Thickens the boiling milk into a smooth, creamy white sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce and lightly coats the toast.
Toast
Provides a crisp, absorbent base that holds the warm sauce.

The step that matters

Rub the butter and corn-starch together, then add to the boiling milk. Corn-starch clumps if dropped into hot liquid unmixed. Blending it with fat first coats the granules so they disperse evenly and thicken smoothly instead of forming lumps.

“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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