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Chinese Eggs

A savory dish of boiled eggs in a butter‑flour sauce seasoned with stock, milk, salt, pepper, 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 shells and slice them.

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, ⅓ cup of milk, ½ teaspoon of salt, and ½ teaspoon of black pepper; stir until thickened.

Combine and serve

  1. Gently fold 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, and their sliced form is folded into the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour into the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter into a roux.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the sauce as it thickens.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce until thickened. Flour needs time over heat in the fat and liquid to swell and gelatinise fully; stopping early leaves a thin, floury sauce. Keep the heat gentle in the double boiler so the milk does not scorch or curdle.

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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