Skip to main content
Main

Eggs a LA Tripe

A baked dish of boiled eggs layered with béchamel sauce, shallot, parsley, breadcrumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Eggs a LA Tripe

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Boil the eggs for seven minutes, then shell and slice them.

  2. Butter a dish and spread a thin layer of Béchamel sauce on the bottom.

Assemble

  1. Layer sliced eggs on the sauce, sprinkling with shallot and parsley.

  2. Add another layer of sauce and repeat with the eggs until nearly full.

  3. Top with sauce, sprinkle with bread crumbs, and dot with butter pieces.

Bake

  1. Place the dish in a tin of boiling water and bake in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for 15-20 minutes.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sauce + shallottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Form the body of the dish, setting firmly to give structure when baked.
Béchamel sauce
Provides a creamy, moist layer that keeps the eggs from drying out in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown as it melts over the bread crumbs.
Browned bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping through browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Baking in a water bath. The boiling water around the dish moderates the heat, so the egg and sauce set gently rather than turning rubbery or curdled. Keep the water boiling and the oven hot as directed.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, sauce, shallot, bread):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sauce, shallot, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes