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Venetian Eggs

A dish of eggs cooked in tomato sauce with cheese, onion, butter, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Venetian Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the base

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish over medium heat.

  2. Add the grated onion and cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Stir in the cheese cut into small pieces and cook until melted.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add the heated and strained tomato juice.

  2. Mix in the well-beaten egg yolks, cayenne, and salt.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + cheesetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,896 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they heat and add richness and body.
Cheese
Melts into the sauce, adding fat, richness and a creamy texture.
Tomatoes
Provide moisture, acidity and the main flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the base before the other ingredients go in.
Onion
Softens and adds aroma and mild sweetness as it cooks in the butter.

The step that matters

Mixing in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if they meet very hot liquid too quickly they can scramble into lumps. Stirring steadily and keeping the heat moderate lets them blend smoothly into a creamy sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, cheese, egg, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, cheese, egg, butter. 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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