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Bercy Eggs

Bercy Eggs are eggs cooked with butter, seasoned with salt, served with grilled sausage and tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Bercy Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the eggs

  1. Melt half of the butter in a dish.

  2. Break the eggs into the dish, being careful not to burst the yolks.

  3. Baste the yolks with the remaining butter and season with salt.

  4. Cook until the whites are fully set and the yolks are glossy.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with a small grilled sausage placed between the yolks.

  2. Surround the dish with a thread of tomato sauce.

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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Egg + tomatotop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,890 recipes

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Eggs
Set whites and glossy yolks form the main body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and basting the yolks keeps them glossy.
Small grilled sausage
Adds savory protein and a browned, smoky contrast to the eggs.

The step that matters

Cook until the whites are fully set and the yolks are glossy. Egg whites set through heat and proteins coagulate, while yolks thicken more slowly. Stopping too early leaves runny whites, and cooking too long makes yolks dry and chalky.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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