Skip to main content
Main

Eggs. Eggs

Eggs served with sautéed onions, butter, milk, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Eggs. Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Skin, wash, and remove the hearts from the onions, then slice them into rounds.

Make the onion sauce

  1. Melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the onions and simmer without browning.

  3. Sprinkle the onions with flour.

  4. Add the milk or cream.

  5. Cook until reduced.

  6. Season with salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg.

Add the eggs and serve

  1. Slice the hard-boiled eggs into rounds.

  2. Gently mix the egg rounds with the onion mixture without breaking them.

  3. Add more butter and chopped parsley.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they simmer, forming the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour to the onions and the finished dish.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the onion mixture together with the milk or cream.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and, once reduced, a creamy, thickened texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the main protein and substance of the dish.

The step that matters

Gently mix the egg rounds with the onion mixture without breaking them. Hard-boiled egg whites are fragile and the yolks crumble easily, so folding gently keeps the rounds intact and the dish looking neat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, pepper, nutmeg, egg, parsley. 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