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With Cheese and Parsley

Eggs cooked with butter, parsley, nutmeg, salt, pepper, and Gruyère cheese, served immediately.

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

With Cheese and Parsley

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese and parsley base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Fry the chopped parsley in the melted butter.

  3. Add nutmeg, salt, pepper, and grated cheese; stir until the cheese melts.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring continuously until mixed.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Gruyere cheese + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a creamy, scrambled-style body as they are stirred into the warm base.
Gruyere cheese
Melts into the butter to add richness and a savoury, nutty flavour.
Butter
Carries the parsley and cheese and adds richness and flavour to the eggs.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs one at a time while stirring. Eggs set quickly over heat, so stirring them in continuously keeps the mixture smooth and prevents lumps of cooked egg forming.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, pepper, gruyere cheese, white wine, egg):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, pepper, gruyere cheese, white wine, egg. 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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