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Eggs Cocotte

A baked egg dish with buttered ramekins, bread crumbs, cream, optional ham, chicken, mushrooms, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Eggs Cocotte

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter individual baking dishes.

  2. Line with a mixture of fine bread crumbs and cream.

  3. Optionally sprinkle with chopped ham, chicken, or mushrooms mixed with a little cream or sauce, and season.

Cook and finish

  1. Break an egg into the lined dish and cook like shirred eggs.

  2. When done, cover with a little cream, tomato, or béchamel sauce, and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs (in the method)
Set to a soft, custard-like texture as they cook in the dish.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a absorbent base that soaks up cream and keeps the egg in place.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the crumbs and egg tender while cooking.
Butter
Greases the dishes and adds richness and a savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Breaking the egg into the lined dish and cooking gently like shirred eggs. Egg proteins set at moderate heat; too much heat toughens the white and dries the yolk, so the cook should watch closely and remove the dish once the white is just set.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, cream, ham, chicken, mushroom):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, cream, ham, chicken, mushroom. 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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