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Chinese Eggs

A boiled egg dish served with a butter‑flour sauce and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Chinese Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil 6 eggs for 45 minutes, then remove the shells and slice the eggs.

Make the sauce

  1. In a double boiler, melt 2 tablespoons of butter and whisk in 2 tablespoons of flour.

  2. Add ½ cup of stock and ½ cup of milk, stirring until the sauce thickens.

Combine and serve

  1. Stir in the sliced eggs and cover for a moment.

  2. Dust with 1 tablespoon of chopped parsley and serve.

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

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Provide the main body of the dish, cooked through and sliced for the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries the flour so it can thicken smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth, stable sauce.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the sauce as it thickens.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce. Whisking flour into melted butter before adding liquid helps prevent lumps. Stirring as the liquid is added lets starch granules swell evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

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

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