Skip to main content
Main

Eggs, a LA Dauphine

Eggs à la Dauphine is a layered egg dish with a buttery yolk mixture, Parmesan, and Bechamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 34,122 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Eggs, a LA Dauphine

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the eggs hard.

  2. Remove the shells.

  3. Cut each egg in half lengthwise.

  4. Scoop out the yolks and place them in a bowl. Keep the whites on a dish.

  5. Add butter, soaked French roll, parsley, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and Parmesan to the yolks. Pound the mixture well.

  6. Add one whole egg and two yolks. Mix thoroughly.

  7. Fill the egg whites with the yolk mixture. Smooth the tops with a knife dipped in water.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread a thin layer of the remaining mixture at the bottom of a dish.

  2. Stack the filled egg whites in a pyramidal form.

  3. Rub four hard-boiled yolks through a sieve over the eggs to create a vermicelli-like topping.

  4. Garnish with fried croutons around the base.

  5. Bake in the oven at 300°F (150°C) for about 20 minutes.

  6. Once baked to a bright-yellow color, pour thin Bechamel sauce around the dish.

  7. Serve.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,516 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites form the edible shell while yolks, bound with other ingredients, make the rich filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the yolk filling a smooth, creamy texture.
French roll soaked in cream
Adds moisture and body, helping the yolk mixture hold together and stay soft.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory, salty flavor and helps the filling brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Smooth the tops with a knife dipped in water. Wetting the knife lets you smooth the filling without dragging it, giving an even surface that bakes evenly and looks neat under the sieved yolk topping.

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, cream, nutmeg, pepper, parmesan cheese, bread):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Cinnamonabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, cream, nutmeg, pepper, parmesan cheese, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes