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Ceufs a LA Tripe

Hard-boiled eggs cooked with onions, butter, flour, pepper, salt, and vinegar or cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Ceufs a LA Tripe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the onion base

  1. Slice the onions thinly and brown them in butter.

  2. Stir in the flour.

Assemble and finish

  1. Cut the hard-boiled eggs into quarters or thick slices and add them.

  2. Season with pepper and salt.

  3. Add vinegar or substitute with cream and sugar, then pour over the mixture.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Onions
Caramelised sweetness and savoury depth as they brown slowly in butter.
Butter
Carries browning and adds rich fat flavour to the onions.
Flour
Stirred into the onions to thicken the mixture into a sauce.
Hard-boiled eggs
Form the body of the dish, adding protein structure and mild richness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, buttery onion sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the onions. Onions need slow, even browning in butter. Too little heat leaves them soft and pale, while too much scorches the sugars and makes the sauce bitter.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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