Skip to main content
Main

Eggs Piquant

Eggs Piquant is a dish of boiled eggs topped with a sweet and savory sauce made from hard‑boiled yolks, butter, sugar, and vinegar.

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

Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Eggs Piquant

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the eggs

  1. In a porcelain-lined kettle, bring water, salt, and vinegar to a boil.

  2. Carefully break in fresh eggs, one at a time, without breaking the yolks.

  3. Once the egg whites are cooked, use a perforated skimmer to remove them and place in cold water.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. On a large platter, arrange the eggs and strain the boiling liquid over them.

  2. In a bowl, mix the grated hard-boiled egg yolks with butter, sugar, and some of the strained sauce.

  3. Heat the mixture until boiling, then pour it over the eggs.

  4. Garnish with 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. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh eggs
Whites set into tender pieces while the yolks stay intact for presentation.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed into the sauce to add richness and body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, smoothing the yolk sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its piquant flavor and helps the whites set.

The step that matters

Breaking in the fresh eggs. Eggs must go in one at a time and be lowered gently into simmering liquid, because a rough drop or a violent boil breaks the yolks and scatters the whites. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer lets the whites set around the yolks.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg, butter, sugar. 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