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Preserve

Cold Eggs

Cold eggs served with tarragon jelly, leaves, truffles, ham, croutons, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cold Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Poach and trim the eggs.

Assemble in the jelly

  1. Place a little tarragon jelly in the bottom of the egg dish.

  2. Once the jelly has set, decorate it with scalded tarragon leaves.

  3. Place the poached egg on top and cover with more jelly.

Serve

  1. Serve in or out of the mold according to your preference.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Truffle + hamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together516 recipes

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

  3. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Egg + truffletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,604 recipes

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

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Form the main body of the dish, holding their shape when poached and chilled.
Tarragon jelly
Sets around the egg, holding it in place and adding moisture and tarragon flavour.
Tarragon leaves
Add aroma and a green decorative finish on the set jelly.

The step that matters

Let the jelly set before decorating. Tarragon jelly is gelatin-based and firms as it cools. If it is still liquid, the scalded leaves can drift or sink and the egg can shift when more jelly is added.

Swap the tarragon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, truffle, ham, parsley):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Tarragonthe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, truffle, ham, parsley. 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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