Name: Eggs Aux Fines Herbes
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; 2 tablespoons chopped shallots; 2 tablespoons chopped chives; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ⅓ cup white wine; 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour; 2 tablespoons butter; 4 hard-boiled eggs, kept hot

Why it works: Shallot and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 450 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Eggs Aux Fines Herbes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

Combine parsley, shallots, chives, pepper, salt, white wine, flour, and butter in a stewpan.
Bring the mixture to a boil.

Serve

Pour the sauce over the hard-boiled eggs kept hot in boiling water.
Alternatively, serve poached eggs with the same sauce.

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.

Shallot + chivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together450 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,150 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,081 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Form the main body of the dish, with the sauce coating them.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, and helps build the smooth body of the sauce.
All-purpose flour: Thickens the wine and butter mixture into a sauce.
White wine: Adds acidity and liquid that carries the herb flavor into the sauce.
Shallots: Add a mild onion-like sharpness and aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil. Flour needs to reach a boil in the liquid to thicken fully. Stopping early can leave the sauce thin and floury-tasting, while the wine and butter need to combine smoothly into it.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, chive, pepper, white wine, flour, butter, egg):

Capersfits better
Tarragonfits about as well
Parsleythe original
Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, chive, pepper, white wine, flour, butter, 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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Eggs Aux Fines Herbes