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Scotch Eggs

A dish of boiled eggs wrapped in sausage meat, breaded and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Scotch Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil 2 eggs for 12 minutes.

  2. Place boiled eggs in cold water, then remove the shells.

Coat

  1. Cover each egg with sausage meat.

  2. Dip each covered egg in beaten egg and then in bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot fat until golden brown.

  2. Cut in halves and serve on a bed of parsley.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  3. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  4. Meat + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,040 recipes

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

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 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

Eggs
Form the firm cooked centre that holds the whole Scotch egg together.
Sausage meat
Forms the savoury outer layer that surrounds the egg.
Beaten egg
Acts as a glue so the bread crumbs stick to the sausage meat.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden-brown coating when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat until golden brown. If the fat is not hot enough, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy before it browns, and the sausage may stay underdone. Hot fat sets and browns the crumb quickly so the crust stays crisp.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, meat, bread):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, meat, bread. 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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