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Sardines with Egg Cream

A baked sardine dish topped with a creamy sauce of egg yolks, butter, tarragon vinegar, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Sardines with Egg Cream

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Remove the skin and bones from the sardines and break them into flakes.

  3. Cut the gluten biscuit into nice square pieces.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the sardine flakes on the gluten biscuit slices and warm them in the oven.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the butter, egg yolks, tarragon vinegar, and mustard, stirring until slightly thickened.

  3. Pour the egg cream over the sardines and 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. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Biscuit + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together121 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Biscuit + tarragontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together18 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream and add richness as they set gently with the butter.
Butter
Adds fat and smoothness to the cream, giving it a silky texture.
Sardines
Provide the main savoury flavour and protein of the dish.
Gluten biscuit
Forms the crisp base that holds the sardine flakes.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich egg cream.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg cream until slightly thickened. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated, but too much heat scrambles them into lumps. Stir over low heat and stop as soon as the cream coats a spoon.

Swap the tarragon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, egg, butter, vinegar, mustard):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonthe original
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, egg, butter, vinegar, mustard. 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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