Name: Egg Patties
Ingredients: 6 patty cases; 4 tablespoons white sauce; 1 teaspoon lemon juice; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; 2 hard boiled eggs; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste; Ground mace to taste

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Egg Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

Chop the hard-boiled eggs finely.
In a bowl, combine the chopped eggs, white sauce, lemon juice, parsley, and season with salt, pepper, and ground mace.

Heat and fill

Set the mixture in a pan of boiling water to heat through.
Fill the patty cases with the egg mixture.

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,268 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,257 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Hard-boiled eggs: Provide the main body and rich flavour of the filling.
White sauce: Binds the chopped eggs and adds moisture so the filling stays soft.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich egg and sauce flavours.

Swap the mace

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

Tarragonfits better
Dillfits better
Marjoramfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, lemon, parsley, egg, pepper. 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.