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Eggs À LA Bonne Femme

Hard-boiled eggs mixed with butter, chopped vegetables, spices, and lemon juice, then spooned into the shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 118,511 recipes mention both. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Remove the yolks from the hard-boiled eggs and place them in a bowl.

  2. While the yolks are hot, add the butter and mix until melted.

  3. Stir in the chopped vegetables, white pepper, salt, nutmeg, and lemon juice until well combined.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill cups with the mixture while it is still moist to prevent it from firming up.

  2. If using beet-root, fill half the cups with the mixture, then add beet-root and mix well to achieve a bright red color.

  3. Fill the remaining half of the cups and arrange them on a dish with parsley for garnish.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Egg + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together118,511 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,467 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks provide the rich, creamy base that the filling is built on.
Butter
Fat that melts into the warm yolks, adding smoothness and richness to the filling.
Carrot
Adds body and mild sweetness to the filling along with its chopped texture.
Lemon juice
Acidity brightens the filling and balances the richness of the yolks and butter.

The step that matters

Fill the cups while the mixture is still moist. As the filling cools it firms up and becomes stiff, so piping or spooning it while still moist keeps it smooth and easy to shape in the cups.

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, carrot, turnip, celery, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, carrot, turnip, celery, nutmeg, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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