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Dessert

Egg Pap

Egg Pap is a thickened egg mixture cooked in water until it sets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Egg Pap

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Set a quart of water on the stove over medium heat.

  2. Mix 2 tablespoons of wheat flour with the yolks of 2 or 3 beaten eggs and a little cold water to form a batter.

  3. When the water is about to boil, add the batter while stirring continuously.

  4. Once it thickens, remove from heat.

  5. Add a pinch of salt.

Cool

  1. Pour into a basin to cool gradually.

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. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Wheat + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the liquid and add richness as they set with heat.
Wheat flour
Thickens the batter so it sets into a smooth, spoonable custard.

The step that matters

Adding the batter to hot water. Stir continuously while pouring the batter into near-boiling water so the flour and yolks disperse evenly. Otherwise they can clump into lumps before the mixture thickens.

“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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