Skip to main content
Main

Parsley Eggs

Poached eggs served on buttered toast with a parsley cream sauce.

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

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Parsley Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the eggs

  1. Break fresh eggs into boiling water, slightly salted.

  2. Remove the poached eggs with a skimmer.

  3. Place the eggs on slices of buttered toast.

Make the parsley sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix cream or milk, chopped parsley, butter, and flour smoothly.

  2. Season the sauce with salt and pepper.

  3. Boil the sauce for three minutes.

  4. Pour the sauce over the eggs.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Fresh eggs
Provide the main protein that sets into the dish's centerpiece when poached.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the toast and enriches the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream or milk into a smooth, coating sauce.
Cream or rich milk
Forms the body of the sauce, adding richness and a silky texture.
Chopped parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma and color to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce for three minutes. Flour only thickens fully once its starch granules swell in simmering liquid. Boiling for the full time cooks out the raw floury taste and gives the sauce a smooth, coating body.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes