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Tarragon Eggs

A baked dish of sliced hard‑boiled eggs topped with a tarragon‑infused white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,547 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tarragon Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Boil the eggs for 7 minutes, then cut them into slices.

  2. Butter a pie dish and lay the egg slices in it.

Make the sauce and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the hot white sauce with the egg yolks, tarragon, and tarragon vinegar.

  2. Pour the mixture over the eggs in the pie dish.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 10 minutes.

  4. Serve with fried croutons around the dish.

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. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sauce + tarragontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together566 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Egg + tarragontop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,789 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Sauce + vinegartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,844 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and vinegar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 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

Hard-boiled eggs
Form the main body of the dish, holding its structure as sliced eggs.
White sauce
Provides a creamy, moist coating that binds the eggs together.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and help it thicken and set when baked.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the yolks into the hot white sauce. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the sauce is too hot or stirred poorly, the yolks can scramble into lumps instead of forming a smooth, set custard-like sauce.

Swap the tarragon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sauce, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonthe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Dillfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sauce, vinegar. 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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