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Eggs a LA Tripe

Hard‑boiled eggs mixed with parboiled onions, Bechamel sauce, garlic, mignonette pepper, nutmeg, lemon juice, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Eggs a LA Tripe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs and onions

  1. Boil the eggs hard, then immerse them in cold water for 3 minutes.

  2. Remove the shells and cut the eggs into thick slices.

  3. Slice the onions and parboil them in water.

  4. Boil the onions in a little milk, drain, and add to the eggs.

Make and serve

  1. Add Bechamel sauce, garlic, mignonette pepper, nutmeg, and lemon juice to the eggs.

  2. Toss everything together over heat until hot, then serve garnished with slices.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Form the main body of the dish and provide its substance.
Bechamel sauce
Adds creamy moisture that coats the eggs and onions.
Onions
Contribute mild sweetness and soft texture once boiled in milk.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and eggs.

The step that matters

Toss over heat until hot. Heating the eggs gently after adding the sauce warms them through without overcooking. Too much heat can make the sauce separate or turn the egg whites rubbery.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sauce, clove, garlic, pepper, nutmeg, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sauce, clove, garlic, pepper, nutmeg, lemon. 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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