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Egg Gravy

A savory sauce made with chicken broth, hard‑boiled eggs, butter, flour, salt, pepper, and optional mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 849 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Egg Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine chicken broth and chopped hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Roll the butter in flour and add to the saucepan.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Boil the mixture to thicken, stirring frequently.

  5. For a variation, substitute plain water and add mustard if desired.

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. Walnut + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (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
Rolled in flour, it coats the flour so it disperses without lumps, and adds richness to the gravy.
All-purpose flour
Starch that thickens the broth as it boils, giving the gravy body.
Hard-boiled eggs
Chopped eggs add flavor and body to the broth, giving the gravy its distinctive character.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture to thicken, stirring frequently. Flour thickens only when the liquid reaches a boil and the starch granules swell. Stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, walnut, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, walnut, butter, flour, 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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