Skip to main content
Main

Eggs with Cheese

A dish of beaten eggs cooked with melted cheese, parsley, spring onions, and nutmeg, served with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,062 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Eggs with Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the eggs

  1. Melt the cheese in a stew-pan over low heat with the butter.

  2. Add the parsley, spring onions, and nutmeg to the melted cheese.

  3. Stir in the beaten eggs and cook until set.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried or toasted bread around the edge of the dish.

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. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a soft, tender structure as they cook, forming the body of the dish.
Dry white cheese
Melts into the butter to add richness and a savoury, salty flavour.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and keeps the melted cheese and eggs smooth.
Spring onions
Add a mild, sharp onion aroma that brightens the rich cheese.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten eggs and cook until set. Eggs turn from liquid to firm through protein coagulation at moderate heat. Cooking too hot or too long makes them tough, dry and grainy, while removing them while still slightly glossy keeps them tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, butter, parsley, nutmeg, egg):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, parsley, nutmeg, 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.

More cheese scrambled eggs recipes

Cottage 3 See all 16 →

You might also like

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipes