Skip to main content
Main

Fried Eggs, Lyonnese Style

Fried eggs served over sautéed onions seasoned with salt, pepper, cayenne, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fried Eggs, Lyonnese Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Slice the onions very finely.

  2. Season the onions with salt, pepper, and cayenne.

Cook the onions

  1. Fry the onions gently in butter until golden.

  2. Drain off the butter and place the onions on a hot dish.

  3. Squeeze the juice of half a lemon over the onions.

Finish and serve

  1. Fry the eggs and trim them neatly.

  2. Dress the fried eggs on top of the onions.

  3. Garnish with crispy parsley and serve hot.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Onions
Provide the bulk and sweetness as they soften and turn golden in butter.
Eggs
Form the rich, set topping that sits over the onions.
Butter
Carries the frying of the onions and adds richness and browning.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and egg flavours.

The step that matters

Fry the onions gently in butter until golden. Low, gentle heat lets the onion sugars brown slowly and evenly. High heat scorches the butter and onions before they turn sweet, leaving a bitter taste.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes