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Eggs a LA Tripe

A creamy onion and egg dish with butter, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Eggs a LA Tripe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the onion sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan. Add the flour and mix well.

  2. Stir in the minced onions and add the milk, cream, or water. Let the mixture stew without browning the onions or butter.

  3. Season with salt and white pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the sliced hard-boiled eggs and heat until hot. Serve immediately.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Break down slowly into the sauce, adding sweetness and body to the dish.
Butter
Fat that enriches the sauce and carries flavor through the mixture.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Milk, cream, or water
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into the sauce.
Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the main body and protein of the dish, warmed through in the sauce.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stew without browning the onions or butter. Browning adds bitter, toasted flavors that clash with the mild, creamy sauce. Gentle, low heat lets the onions soften and sweeten while the flour thickens smoothly.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, milk, 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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