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Egg Salmagundi

Egg Salmagundi is a savory dish of eggs, butter, cream, mushrooms, and sweetbread, served with fried bread croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Egg Salmagundi

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a stew-pan.

  2. Chop the sweetbread and fry it with the mushrooms in the butter until white.

  3. Beat the eggs and mix them with the cream.

  4. Pour the egg and cream mixture into the stew-pan.

  5. Stir over a gentle fire until the mixture thickens.

  6. Serve with croutons of fried 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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + lambtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together450 recipes

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

  4. Cream + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  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
Set and thicken the mixture into a soft, creamy texture as they cook.
Thick cream
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the eggs tender rather than dry.
Butter
Carries the frying of the sweetbread and mushrooms and adds richness.
Lamb's sweetbread
Provides the main meaty element, browned in butter for flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Stir over a gentle fire until the mixture thickens. Egg proteins set with heat, so high heat or long stirring can curdle the mixture into grainy lumps. Gentle heat and constant stirring give a smooth, thickened result.

“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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